Islam And Sufism Essay

II. The Relationship Between Islam and Sufism

Though plenty of Muslim scholars have spoken out in favor of Sufism, the prevailing opinion among both Islamic legal scholars and Muslims as that Sufism is bid’ah, (an inauthentic innovation) that is not wholly Islamic, and therefore rejected as an acceptable way to practice Islam. Sufism has always been an ‘alternative’ discourse in the Islamic world “existing in tension with stricter, legalistic elements in the tradition, and there continue to be voices in Islam that would deny the legitimacy and the pervasiveness of Sufism in Islamic culture” (Miller 1995). In fact a fatwa (an Islamic legal opinion) was delivered by Shaykh 'Abd al-Halim Mahmud, a former Shaykh al-Azhar, the chief religious authority in Egypt against Sufism in the 1970s. His main objection to Sufism was the attempt of practitioners to take on the qualities of God, which was to compete with God instead of surrendering to him and serving him. Despite some disagreement as to the authenticity of Sufism, it continues to grow and thrive. Especially in the West (the home of many esoteric Organizations like the Free Masons, the Knights

Many of these movements sought to reject traditional Western establishment, and one of the ways this manifested was by borrowing religious wisdom from the East. A number of Sufi groups came into existence stateside at this time, and traditional existing Sufi Orders became invaded by ‘flower children’ (Gabbay 1988). Many of the Sufi organizations that formed at this time were blended with other mystical and Eastern traditions, and were quite different from Middle Eastern Sufi Orders. Between the late 1960s and the late 1970s groups such as the Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship, the Khalwatiyyah-Ierrahiyyahs, the Nimatullahis, and the Sufi Order of the West all had a presence in the United States (Miller