How is Sufism related to Islam?

sufism can be a hard topic to cover for various reasons different people will often conceive of it in very different ways which makes it very difficult to pin down as with any topic the discussion will always be colored by the person talking and the particular perspective or portrayal that that person wants to put forth about a certain subject like sufism for example as alexander knows points out in his excellent recent book called sufism sufism has been portrayed in many different ways over the last century including by academics and scholars and a very common tendency in the portrayal of sufism has been to highlight its metaphysical and philosophical aspects often at the expense of its actual lived and practiced realities another aspect of sufism that is often portrayed in very different ways is its relationship with islam while it is often called islamic mysticism sufism is sometimes in certain contexts seen as something that is somehow a bit separated from islam we can see this for example that if we walk into a bookshop or a library we often see a category labeled as islam and sufism clearly a common idea is that there is some kind of difference between the two even if they are strongly connected but is this the way that sufisms function historically and what differences are there in the way that sufism is conceived of and practiced [Music] [Applause] today [Music] this video is a collaboration with my friend dr angela puka from the channel angelus symposium angela is a religious studies phd and a university lecturer whose youtube channel specializes in the academic study of religious movements that incorporate magical practices of different sorts so please make sure to check out her video on sufism in western euterracism the companion video to this one and to subscribe to her channel and i will link all of that in the description and in a card which you can click above the topic of this video is partly inspired by a question i got for a patron only q a that i did a few weeks ago where i was asked about sufism's relationship to islam whether it predates islam or if it's somehow something different from islam basically and this can be a complicated topic that is often influenced or is often colored by subjective opinion and bias but let's try to get as broad of a picture of this topic as possible so to start off with a very simple and general question is sufism a part of islam and from a historical objective opinion without taking normative theology into account yes it definitely is sufism as i mentioned is often referred to as islamic mysticism and has served as a central part of islamic practice throughout history that much we can be certain about but today we often hear arguments that sufism is somehow separated from islam and this kind of argument comes from all kinds of directions both hostile and friendly contemporary new religious movements that incorporate aspects of sufism often presented as a universal or ancient wisdom that transcends the religion of islam and many universalist sufi groups today actually make the same kind of argument but we also see similar statements from groups that are very hostile to sufism within islam groups like these salafists or the wahhabis or muslim reform movements in general who see sufism as you know superstitious foreign-inspired innovations that has nothing to do with quote-unquote real islam we also often hear contemporary persian or iranian nationalist groups who want to claim that sufism somehow predates islam and is part of some kind of ancient persian heritage that only entered the religion of islam with the influence of persian culture but is any of this true the thing is it's pretty complicated and sometimes it depends on the perspective you choose to view it from but scholars who study sufism or islamic history mostly agree that sufism is an islamic phenomenon that appears in an islamic context sufism as we know it which is known as tasawaf in arabic appears for the first time in the 8th century in places like baghdad and basra and generally across the newly formed islamic empire or civilization the so-called sufis although they weren't universally called this name at this point took the islamic religion and its sources the quran and hadith as its starting point and then developed ascetical and renunciant practices that was aimed to deepen the person's relationship with god and to purify the soul from worldliness and sin famous figures like mohasebi nun al-misri rabia al-adawiyah junaid and many others are some examples of these early so-called sufis they developed practices like vikkur the repetitious recital of god's names or the islamic proclamation of faith as well as sama or spiritual audition involving things like music and dance it is no doubt that these early renuncians and mystics consider themselves muslims who practice the religion of islam to them the practices that we call sufism was simply the deeper and more pure way to live as a muslim and follow the quran and sunnah of the prophet muhammad sufis themselves will often say that the tradition goes back directly to the prophet muhammad or even all the way back to adam the first prophet and man they also connect this to a group of the prophet's companions known as the ahled sufa the people of the bench which is a kind of spiritual elite who lived in a section of the prophet's mosque in medina and who are sometimes considered to be the kind of forebearers of the sufis but of course influence was taken from outside as well as the arabs conquered vast areas in the middle east and north africa and all the way to india they came into contact with many different religious and intellectual traditions which all of course had an effect on the developing traditions within islam including sufism many scholars today will argue that one of the primary inspirations for the early proto-sufis or renuncians were the christian monastics who lived in the middle east at the time but nonetheless what is important to remember is that for these so-called sufis both in this early period and for most of history sufism was not considered its own branch of islam or something separated from islam at all sufism or tasawolf simply denoted a certain aspect or tendency within islam we call we could call it a spiritual aspect of islam now a few centuries later from the 12th century onwards sufism became so widespread and popular that it was the mainstream basically the movement had started to formulate some of its basic systematic teachings and practices and perhaps most importantly had started to organize themselves into orders tariqta or turoq in plural these these orders were founded around certain sufi saints and teachers and would have an enormous influence in all of the islamic world sufism has in fact been a central part of mainstream islam from the middle ages and right up until the well the 19th century really when certain reform movements sort of modernizing reform movements as well as other factors played into sufism's eventual decline you could say really most muslims in history at least before the 19th century have been connected to sufism and its different orders in some way it really has been that significant but today however it is often portrayed and presented as something like a fringe sect and a small branch or small sect within islam something that definitely is not reflected in history so that's point number one for most of its history sufism and islam has basically been one and the same thing tasawolf has simply been a certain theoretical and practical tendency within the religion alongside things like jurisprudence or kalam theology sufism should not be seen as its own branch of islam like shia and sunni instead sufism is a certain tendency or a certain aspect within islam a certain practical and sometimes theoretical tendency but does this mean that we can't somehow separate between the categories of islam and sufism today well not necessarily as we saw earlier there are many today who will hold that sufism is somehow separated from more different from islam and that even some sufis today hold this position so clearly even though this was not the case in historically clearly something is a bit different today we can start by addressing the often stated claim that sufism somehow predates islam that sufism is some kind of ancient spiritual wisdom that was only appropriated by the islamic religion but that really in a large historical sense transcends it you hear this argument from many different peoples including indeed by some sufis themselves today so is this claim true then well i would say yes and no while as i said earlier sufism as we know it definitely emerges in an islamic framework certainly there are also aspects of sufism that existed before the emergence of islam we already talked about the fact that the early proto-sufis were most likely influenced by things like christian monasticism as well as other traditions from the ancient world including neoplatonism and maybe hermeticism it would be very hard to deny that some aspects of what we call sufism today did exist in some form before the mission of the prophet muhammad but when we talk about sufism as an analytical category and historical phenomenon it is intimately connected to the religion of islam and the context shortly after its emergence another important aspect to take into consideration here is that the sufis or muslims themselves wouldn't necessarily disagree indeed one of the primary tenets of islamic belief is that the religion existed since before muhammad muslims believe that god has sent the same message to various prophets across history including prophets like moses and jesus and that any similarity that we find between islam and other religions can be explained by this fact the teachings of islam and thus sufism existed before muhammad and all the way back to adam himself so the argument that sufism existed before islam is often countered from within the islamic religion itself in this way of course it existed since before muhammad because islam itself did so in the end it really depends on how you look at it from one perspective certain aspects of what we call sufism did exist before islam at least as defined as the religion brought by the prophet muhammad but if we don't want to make the term sufism so broad that it ceases to have any meaning because it can mean anything then we should we should recognize the fact that sufism as we know it the particular movement and tradition that we call sufism does emerge in an islamic framework and as a particular aspect of the religion of islam but things today can look quite a bit different while we have seen that for most of history sufism or tasawaf was an integral and very central aspect of islamic belief and practices on a mainstream level for most of history this is not necessarily the case today instead sufism today is often seen as something that is somehow separated from islam and defined as a category of its own and there are a lot of reasons for this sufism's relationship with islam has really been attacked from several fronts over the last centuries one important factor in this development is as always colonialism with the influx of modernist ideologies into the middle east muslim reformists in the 19th and early 20th century started to question certain aspects of the islamic tradition the middle east wanted to quote unquote catch up to the modernization in europe and many attempts were made to reform the religion in this movement intellectuals like muhammad abdul rashid riddha and even thinkers like ahmed khan and muhammad iqbal who while he was a fan of rumi saw sufism as problematic sufism represented irrational superstition that created idol and apathetic muslims instead of active participants in the political changes that were to take place and many of these reform movements of the 19th and 20th centuries have become so widespread and so successful that the role of sufism in the islamic world has been seriously diminished over the last century at the same time many western colonialist thinkers as well as academics and intellectuals took an interest in sufi writings around the turn of the 20th century they started translating sufi poetry and so on in a quite well racist and bigoted way they couldn't possibly reconcile the beautiful expressions of sufi writings with what they consider to be a religion that was fundamentalist by nature intolerant and shallow and so on in other words to the colonialist scholars sufism must be something other than islam it must be something that exists in spite of islam not because of it so not only did colonialism indirectly lead to developments in the islamic intellectual context where sufism started to be looked at with skepticism and and and critique the colonialist thinkers and economics themselves started to use rhetoric and talk about sufism in a way that seemed to separate it from islam but another very important factor in this is the rise of what we call fundamentalist movements within islam groups like the wahhabis who appears in the 18th century and who were very openly and and strictly against all forms of sufism started to gain a lot of traction in arabia and connected to this the so-called salafis who emerged partly as a result of the reform movements that i mentioned earlier also became a significant player and significant force in the 20th century and even up until today these groups have often actively opposed sufism and often see it as a heretical innovation to the what they conceive of as the true nature of islam so we have an attack on sufism's relationship with islam from multiple directions from modernist muslims who see it as old superstition to salafis and wahhabis who see it as innovation and heresy and even western scholars and academics who wanted to portray sufism as a category that could stand on its own without necessary connections to islam finally and connected to all of this certain tendencies and developments within sufism itself has also led in this kind of direction with the increased communication between different peoples around the world and different cultures and and the increased communication generally many sufis at the start of the 20th century for example started to formulate their tradition in more universal ways in the early 20th century as the first sufi teachers started to reach europe they sometimes adapted to the cultures and circumstances on the continent a prime example of this is the shishti master inayat khan who traveled widely across europe and north america to spread his sufi message before his death in 1927 he gradually developed a sufism that was open to non-muslims and presented as a more universal spirituality with affinities to other spiritual traditions like hinduism his order currently called inayatiya is still alive and popular and is led by his grandson pierre zia inayat khan and this is just one example of a wider development within sufism especially as it has reached europe and north america there is also symptomatic of an even wider movement in development in in spirituality and religion generally where by the turn of the 20th century many movements started to appear that wanted to find the kind of common core to all religions this included the theosophical society for example led by helena blavatsky as well as the perennial school or traditional school that also started to appear at around this time this was a general tendency at this time to find a kind of universal universal spirituality and sufism became often a important part in that mission or in that development and for the rest of the 20th century and up until today sufism has become a significant presence in europe and north america not just because of the fact that there has been an increased migration of muslims into these continents but also the fact that sufism has been incorporated into various esoteric movements and new religious movements in in europe and north america today that have taken certain uh features of sufism and incorporated it into their own practices and beliefs in the 1960s and the surrounding period with the increased interest in eastern wisdoms and spirituality sufism was one of these traditions that many people were or became interested in it never became as famous or popular as various forms of hinduism and buddhism but it nonetheless was part of this wider culture and this cultural change and this situation very much remains until today sufism can be found in many different varieties and in different expressions in the so-called western world as i said with the increased migration of muslims into europe and into north america the more you say traditional forms of sufism that is so intimately connected to the religion of islam has also come to have a strong presence now in in in the west so we have sufi movements who have a very universalist approach practicing a form of sufism divorced from its islamic aspects but we also have traditional sufi orders to have a much more you could say orthodox or conservative perspective on the situation and all kinds of variations in between these two and with this in mind who are we to say who is and who isn't a sufi as with all religious traditions sufism is constantly evolving and changing adapting to new situations and contexts while sufism historically has been basically a part of islam today sufism has in a way become something broader and there are sections of the tradition which has become separated from islam at least in the minds of some of its practitioners or or even from some outsiders as we talked about in the beginning everyone wants to frame sufism according to their own narratives but as with any religious tradition like this things are always a lot more complex sufism can be and has partly become a lot of different things for most practitioners in the world it is still synonymous with islam but we have also seen that others have a different approach to it and this is the reality that we find ourselves in today in the west sufism or certain aspects of sufism is often incorporated into various esoteric communities or traditions this is not necessarily something new this kind of thing has been going on for centuries but it's perhaps even more so today than it has ever been and this is a topic that my friend angela puka will be discussing in her companion video so again i'll remind you please check out her video right after you have seen this one i'll leave a link to that in the description and the in the comments as well i hope this video cleared up some questions when it comes to the relationship between sufism and islam and then it gave you a few things to think about when it comes to the complexity and depth of a question or discussion like this there is a lot more to be said and there are aspects this that i haven't been able to cover in this relatively short video but inevitably this will be an ongoing conversation and i look forward to seeing what you have to say in the comments i'll see you next time as always this video was sponsored by our patrons including two of the new saints nadim sabik and nasir zaok thank you both so much and thank you to all of my patrons you are really the reason that i can keep making these scholarly and academic videos if anyone else wants to become a patron i will leave a link to my patreon page in the description or you can leave a one-time donation through paypal and all that will be available in the comments and probably also in the description see in the next video [Music]

Channel: Let's Talk Religion

Views: 207,720

Rating: 4.8854585 out of 5

Keywords: What is Sufism, Sufism and Islam, Is Sufism Islam?, Islamic mysticism, Sufism, Islam, Mysticism, History, Sufism explained, Sufism documentary, Western Islam, Western Sufism, Inayat Khan, Perennialist school, Traditionalists, Tasawwuf, Tasawwuf Islam, Spiritual Islam, Spiritual dimention of Islam, Spirituality in Islam, Islam documentary, lecture on sufism

Id: dflhkfF558c

Length: 22min 12sec (1332 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 11 2021