Who can Resist Invitation of Sufism?

Sufism for the Religious and the Secular in the Postmodern World

It is mainly because of Tasawwuf that Islam became a world religion and nurtured a vivifying culture and enviable civilization. The world has been conquered for good by the Sufi poets and thinkers. Sufi argument for religion and God involves the attractive power of the Truth called beauty that everyone finds irresistible as Plato would note. In fact Arabs were caught in the net of the beauty of form and meaning of the eloquent Quran and the aesthetically oriented Persians found in Sufi metaphysics their heart’s voice.

    None of the great world religions finds it difficult to engage with Tasawwuf. In fact they stand for certain variant of it as esoteric dimension is everywhere. No great philosopher or poet or historian or culture critic, Western or Eastern, could afford not to appreciate it. No secular mind and no religious genius could fail to be attracted to some aspect of it. The Sufis have been ruling hearts and minds of not only Muslim masses but the best educated throughout history. In fact Sufis have constituted the intellectual/spiritual elite of Islam and have been at the forefront of revival (tajdeed) in every century.

    Pakistani critic Syed Abdullah has remarked that Sufism is the only light available in the dark alley of the world. It is no wonder that almost all the great influential modern writers (from Proust to Beckett to Kazantzakis to Hesse to Murdoch to Lessing to Pamuk) and philosophers (from Heidegger and Wittgenstein to Levinas and Derrida) display interest in mysticism and may well be described as mystical or quasimystical or would be mystical.  Mystic dimension is the touchstone or condition of greatness in not only literature, as Coleridge noted, but elsewhere as well- philosophy, art and science.

    Sufism is especially to be treasured by Ulama (exoteric authorities) if they want to be taken seriously by more educated people or intellectual-spiritual elite. It comes to rescue literal law centric religion of laity (exoterism) when it encounters such challenges as were thrown up by modernity – its sciences and philosophical thought currents. “Only sapiential esoterism is in a position to render intelligible the most precarious positions of exoterism and to satisfy certain needs for logical explanations” as Shaykh Isa Schuon noted. And as Karl Rahner has put it “In the days ahead, you will either be a mystic (one who has experienced God for real) or nothing at all.” And “The struggle against atheism is foremost and of necessity a struggle against the inadequacy of our own theism.” Tillich and others have made this point with more eloquence. Ask any question regarding God or otherworld or fate or Fall or Satan or angels and dozens of questions raised by modern science and philosophy in connection with tenability of religion or understanding of scripture in modern or postmodern idiom and Tasawwuf has quite satisfactory answers. And nowhere else are such answers.

    We can’t explain much of Islam – the scripture, biography of the Prophet (S. A.W), four Caliphs, Imams, lives of major Companions and their immediate followers and lives of saints and sages except in light of Sufi notions of fana fir-rasool, fanafillah, gnosis and science of stations.  None of the great names in Islamic history could be characterized as anti-Sufi in strict sense.

    Sufism has influenced the best and the most influential – from politicians/kings to philosophers to scientists to poets to literary critics to various professionals. Sufism has been considered the mainstream of Islamic tradition. And it is instructive to note that in the days of its decline or ill repute, it is still the case that the best minds are still Sufis/would-be-Sufis or decisively influenced by Sufism. From the  twentieth century Indian subcontinent one may list such influential figures across disciplines as Shibli, Iqbal, Faiz, Hafiz Ayub Dehlvi, Pir Mehr Ali Shah, Quratulain Hyder, Wasif Ali Wasif, Mumtaz Mufti, Askari, Saleem Ahmed, Hasrat Mohani, AbulKalam Azad and Jinah who had decisive association/engagement with Sufism. Indeed this association with Sufism is a condition for influence or acceptability amongst both masses and literary-intellectual-spiritual elite in the Muslim world. 

    Sufism has produced front ranking leaders of resistance movements in Islamic history. A great number of major Sufistic/Irfani figures from classical times to more recent figures such as  Sirhindi to Shah Waliullah to Abdul Qadir Jazri to Pir Jamaat Ali Shah and many stalwarts in Iranian revolution took interest in/engaged with matters political/political community spaces. One also needs to note self-avowed and widely believed notion that Sufis play decisive role in influencing politics or what is called the secular sphere by executing works of aalam-i amr through parallel spiritual empire.

    The greatest and most influential poetry produced in Islamic cultures is largely Sufistic in orientation. Sufi themes are all pervasive in our folklore, our legends, our poetry, our epics, our proverbs. Much of the greatest poetry and na’t  in particular is from the Sufis.

    Shaikh Nizam-u’d-din Auliya used to recite the following verse of Shaiykh Abu Sa’id Abul Khair as his motto in life:“Whoever causes grief to us, May his life get more and more happiness.” As Ibn Arabi noted the saints have dropped the possessive adjective (ya) three times, so they do not say 'for me', 'I have' or 'my possessions' (lî, 'indî, matâ'î). Sufi ethic maybe summed up in form of the following dicta of mystically oriented Dostoevsky and Levinas respectively: “We are all responsible for everyone else—but I am more responsible than all the others.” “I owe the Other everything, the Other owes me nothing.” And this “But cannot we live as though we always loved? It was this that the saints and heroes did; this and nothing more.”

    This Other centric ethic, a “perspectivism” attentive of difference and the relative, celebration of immanent divine, the politics of resistance, pluralist, dialogic and art inflected aesthetically oriented  sacred-secular transcending project of Sufism fascinates and illuminates the paradoxical, ironic, open, art invoking pluralist postmodern world.