Sufis and Salafis in the Contemporary Age

313 Pages·2015·1.44 MB·English

by  Lloyd Ridgeon

Sufis and Salafis in the
Contemporary Age
Also available from Bloomsbury
Sufism in Britain, Edited by Ron Geaves and Theodore Gabriel
South Asian Sufis, Edited by Clinton Bennett and Charles M. Ramsay
The Bloomsbury Companion to Islamic Studies, Edited by Clinton Bennett
Sufism, Mahdism and Nationalism, by Douglas H. Thomas
Sufis and Salafis in the
Contemporary Age
Edited by Lloyd Ridgeon
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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First published 2015
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ISBN: HB: 978-1-4725-2387-7
ePDF: 978-1-4725-3223-7
ePub: 978-1-4725-2919-0
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Contents
Contributor List vii
Introduction Lloyd Ridgeon 1
1 Modernity from Within: Islamic Fundamentalism and
Sufism Itzchak Weismann 9
2 Egyptian Sufism Under the Hammer: A Preliminary Investigation
into the Anti-Sufi Polemics of ‘Abd al-Rahman
al-Wakil (1913–70) Richard Gauvain 33
3 Mapping Modern Turkish Sufism and
Anti-Sufism Alberto Fabio Ambrosio 59
4 The Shrines of Shaykh ʿAbd al-Qadir al-Jilani in Baghdad
and his Son in ʿAqra: Current Challenges in Facing
Salafism Noorah Al-Gailani 71
5 The Political Participation of Sufi and Salafi Movements in Modern
Morocco: Between the ‘2003 Casablanca Terrorist Attack’
and the ‘Moroccan Spring’ Aziz el Kobaiti Idrissi 91
6 Sufis as ‘Good Muslims’: Sufism in the Battle against Jihadi
Salafism Mark Sedgwick 105
7 Mystical Traditions and Voices of Dissent: Experiences from
Bengal Kashshaf Ghani 119
8 Representing the Detractors of Sufism in Twentieth-Century
Hyderabad, India Mauro Valdinoci 147
vi Contents
9 Barelwis: Developments and Dynamics of Conflict with
Deobandis Thomas K. Gugler 171
10 The Contested Milieu of Deoband: ‘Salafis’ or ‘Sufis’? Ron Geaves 191
Notes 217
Bibliography 275
Index 299
Contributor List
Alberto Fabio Ambrosio, adjunct at the Université de Lorraine (Metz) and
CETOBAC/EHESS Associate Researcher, was born in Fano (Italy) in 1971.
Having read philosophy and theology in Bologna, he then undertook Turkish
in Strasbourg. In 2007 he finished his doctoral studies in modern history at
the University of Paris (Sorbonne) on the history of the Whirling Dervishes.
Then, he received the Habilitation to teach theology in 2013 at the University of
Metz. He is currently pursuing his research on Turkish Islam. His publications
include Vie d’un Derviche Tourneur: Doctrine et Rituels du Soufisme au XVIIe
siècle (2010); Soufisme et Christianisme: Entre Histoire et Mystique (2013); Soufis
à Istanbul: Hier, Aujourd’hui (2014).
Noorah Al-Gailani is a final-year postgraduate research student at the University
of Glasgow, studying the material culture of two Sufi Qadiri shrines in Iraq – in
Baghdad and in ʿAqra. Her thesis is on the changing identities of Iraqi Sufism
with special focus on the Qadiriyya in Baghdad and ʿAqra. She is also the curator
of Islamic Civilisations at Glasgow Museums, based at The Burrell Collection. In
addition to Islamic art, Noorah’s interests also include intercultural and interfaith
encounters and their evidence in material culture.
Richard Gauvain has lived in the Middle East since 2002. He taught
comparative religions at the American University in Cairo; helped set up
a Middle East Studies Program at the American University in Dubai; and
is currently associate dean of Arts and Sciences at the American University
in Ras al-Khaimah. In the widest sense, his research focuses on the creative
intersections between culture and religion in concrete settings within the region.
He is the author of Salafi Ritual Purity: In the Presence of God, a monograph
on modern Egyptian Salafi attitudes to, and regulations surrounding, the ritual-
legal theme of purity; and has written articles on various aspects of Muslim life
in the Middle East. His current research explores the wide range of relationships,
formal and informal, between Muslims and Christians in the United Arab
Emirates.
viii Contributor List
Ron Geaves is currently visiting professor in the Department of History,
Archaeology and Religion, based in the Centre of the Study of Muslims in
Britain at Cardiff University and visiting professor of Muslim Culture and
Enterprise at University College Suffolk, previously holding Chairs in Religious
Studies at the University of Chester (2001–7) and in the Comparative Study of
Religion at Liverpool Hope University (2007–13). Professor Geaves remains
active in research. Usually, his research is contemporary in focus and involves
ethnographic study, although recently he has embarked on the historical study
of the Muslim presence in Britain. He has written and edited nineteen books
and contributed to around twenty-five edited collections and numerous journal
articles. He is the founding editor of the journal Fieldwork in Religion. His works
include Sectarian Influences in Islam in Britain (1994), Sufis in Britain (2000),
Islam and the West Post 9/11 (2004), Aspects of Islam (2005), Islam Today (2010),
Islam in Victorian Britain: The Life and Times of Abdullah Quilliam (2010), Sufis
of Britain (2014). He is currently working on the history of Islam in Britain in the
Edwardian era, the Deobandi movement, and an edited collection of Abdullah
Quilliam’s writings.
Kashshaf Ghani is an assistant professor at the School of Historical Studies,
Nalanda University. He obtained his PhD in history from the University of
Calcutta (2011) with a dissertation on Sufi rituals and practices across orders in
South Asia. His fields of interest include Sufism, Islam in South Asia and Muslim
societies, with a focus on pre-modern India (1000–1800). He has held research
positions at the Asiatic Society, Kolkata as the inaugural Sir Amir Ali Fellow; at
the University of Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris as the inaugural Perso-Indica fellow
and also at the Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin. His postdoctoral interests
include colonial South Asia, where he explores Indo-Persian cultures along with
transcultural and transregional networks in Muslim communities across South
and West Asia.
Thomas K. Gugler graduated in South Asian studies, religious studies and
psychology from Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and did his PhD in
Islamic studies at the University of Erfurt. He has been working as a research
fellow at the Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin and the Department for Near
Eastern Studies, University of Vienna. He is currently working on ‘Plurality
and Culture in Contemporary South Asia’ at the Centre for Islamic Theology,
University of Muenster. He has published Ozeanisches Gefühl der Unsterblichkeit
(2009) and Mission Medina: Da’wat-e Islami und Tablighi Jama’at (2011).
Contributor List ix
Aziz EL Kobaiti Idrissi is the current president of the International Academic
Center for Sufi and aesthetic Studies (IACSAS) in Fez. He is also professor of
arabic language and Sufi literature at the Moroccan Ministry of National
Education. His publications include Islamic Sufism in the West, (trans. Aisha
Bewley 2012), and several works in Arabic including Tasawwuf al-Islami fi
al-Wilayat al-Muttahidah al-Amrikiyah: Mazahir hudur al-Tasawwuf al-Maghribi
wa-ta’thiratuh (2013) and The Influence of Moroccan Sufism on American Modern
Poetry, (2013) (English/Arabic).
Lloyd Ridgeon is Reader in Islamic studies at the University of Glasgow. His
main area of research is medieval Persian Sufism, but he also engages in studies
of modern Iranian society and culture. In 2014 he was chosen to be the editor of
the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. His books include Jawanmardi: A
Sufi Code of Honour (2011), Morals and Mysticism in Persian Sufism: A History
of Futuwwat in Iran (2010), Sufi Castigator: Ahmad Kasravi and the Iranian Sufi
Tradition (2008), Persian Metaphysics and Mysticism (2002) and Aziz Nasafi
(1998). He has also edited a four-volume collection of essays in Routledgeʼs
Critical Concepts Series entitled Sufism (2008), and has edited a number of works
including Islamic Interpretations of Christianity (2011), Religion and Politics in
Modern Iran (2005), Iranian Intellectuals (1997–2007) (2008) and Shiʿ-i Islam
and Identity (2012). Most recently he has edited The Cambridge Companion to
Sufism (2015).
Mark Sedgwick is a professor of Arab and Islamic studies at Aarhus University
in Denmark. He is a historian by training, and previously taught for many
years at the American University in Cairo. His work focuses on modern and
transregional Islam and especially on Sufism and on Traditionalism. He also
works on terrorism and on Islamic modernism. His books include Muhammad
Abduh: A Biography (2009), Saints and Sons: The Making and Remaking of the
Rashidi Ahmadi Sufi Order, 1799–2000 (2005) and Against the Modern World:
Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century (2004).
His latest book is an edited collection: Making European Muslims: Religious
Socialization among Young Muslims in Scandinavia and Western Europe (2014).
Mauro Valdinoci received his PhD in anthropology from the Department of
Sciences of Language and Culture at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
in 2012. Having carried out fieldwork in Hyderabad, India, for several months in
2006 and in the period 2008–10, he wrote a dissertation which focuses on two