SŪFISMO. – From the camel-hair woolen cloak (Arab. sūf) worn by the followers of the movement, the “spirituality” of Muslims is called Sufism.
The point of departure of Sufism is asceticism (zuhd), consisting in contempt for the world and in mortifications and spiritual exercises intended to purify the soul of all its faults, rendering it worthy of approaching God. To attain this final goal, it is necessary, after an act of repentance and conversion (tawbah), to follow, under the blindly obeyed guidance of a spiritual director (šaih, muršid), a long path (tariq), made up of various stages (maqāmāt), the most important of which are abstinence, renunciation, poverty, patience, trust in God, and the joyful acceptance of all the decrees of the Most High. The culmination is precisely trust in God (tawakkul), which consists in annihilating one’s own will, entrusting oneself to God as to an agent who thinks of and for the sūfī and wills for him. Everything is informed by the idea of suppressing selfishness, not only in a negative form, but also through the active example of altruism and goodness, with the aim of becoming like God (or, at least, like Maometto) in his perfections.
But the supreme goal, upon attaining which the ascetic becomes a mystic, a true sūfī, is tawḥīd. Tawḥīd—the recognition of the unity of God—represents the essence of Muslim dogmatic theology and, indeed, gives it its name; but in mystical theology this term takes on a new meaning: it denotes a state in which “humanity disappears and only divinity remains”; in which man loses consciousness of the world and even of himself, so that the condition preceding creation may be restored, when there was nothing but God.
But in God’s chosen one there predominates a feeling which, in their Author, embraces all creatures: Love ('īq). Opposed to “Reason,” which gives a purely abstract notion of the supreme Being, Love leads to the intuition (mukāšafah) of God and to gnosis (ma'rifah), which is something quite different from simple theological knowledge ('ilm). Through a supreme act of love breathed equally from the side of the Lover and that of the Beloved, the mystic enters into a state of union (ittiṣāl, ittiḥād) with God. This occurs in ecstasy, which is called “drunkenness,” “absence,” “immersion,” “erasure,” and above all “annihilation” (fanā'): an annihilation whose correlative is persistence (baqā') in God. Usually temporary, this state becomes permanent in the great saint, who is at once in God and in the world. Holiness (wilājah, that is, friendship with God) confers the power to exercise acts of dominion (taṣarruf) over things or to perform miracles (karāmāt); indeed, there is a belief that God governs the world through an occult hierarchy of living saints, renewed from generation to generation.
In the state of union, every dualism has disappeared on the plane of consciousness; there are no longer an I and a You: the Lover identifies himself with the Beloved. The “theopathic locutions” (šatāhāt) in which the ecstatic subject expresses himself as God himself would express himself therefore cause no scandal. The ordinary believer says: “Glory to God”; the saint Bājazīd al-Biṣāmi (d. 877–78) exclaims: “Glory to me!”; al-Ḥallāǧ (d. 922) proclaims, “I am God,” and although he was condemned to death for this, tradition has justified and sanctified him.
But might what takes place in the ecstatic’s consciousness not correspond to what Reality itself is? Official dogmatic theology affirms that God is the sole Agent; taking a brief step further, the theorists of ṣ. add that only God has esse proprium, whereas the esse of creatures is mutuatum, so that, properly speaking, they do not exist. From this position, which orthodoxy has no difficulty admitting, one passes gradually to monism, which is found in a nascent state in all Muslim mystics, gains increasingly firm ground under the influence of Neoplatonic ideas
that penetrated the Muslim world, and is constructed into a system by the Murcian Ibn 'Arabī (1165–1240) and his successors. Thus arises the doctrine of waḥdat al-waḡūd (“unity of Being”), according to which there is only one Being. But Being (waḡūd) is inseparable from manifestation (zuhūr), and creation, posterior to God only logically, is precisely a descending series of manifestations: from the “diffusive Being,” or “First Intellect,” followed by the Universal Soul, down to the lowest forms of being. The First Intellect is then identified with Muhammad, who, made consubstantial with God, assumes the function of Logos and is made to appear on earth not only in the historical Muhammad, but also in the persons of all the prophets, beginning with Adam, and of the saints. Holiness restores to man, who possesses it potentially, the function of God’s vicar on earth enjoyed by Adam.
As can be seen, the monism of the ṣūfī is Neoplatonic in type and not Indian. Despite the audacity of some of its formulas, it never falls into absolute pantheism. God’s personality is strongly felt in all the types and manifestations of the ṣ., which remains essentially a practice of life, tending toward the interiorization of dogma, worship, and works. It seeks to substitute for the “thought” God of the dogmatic theologians a “felt” God, not merely feared but loved; to supplement ritualism with individual prayer, conceived as an intimate conversation with God (manāḡāt); and to place all the acts of life under the sign of disinterestedness and altruism. The Qur’an is far from lacking suggestions in this direction; but, while the official religion had neglected them, tending to culminate in farisaism, the ṣ. gathered them up and developed them under the influence of Christian elements so evident that its adherents take Jesus as their model, wear the habit and hair shirt, isolate themselves in cells or gather in convents like monks, and make an apology for monasticism, including celibacy.
Yet the ṣ. did not arrive at monasticism of the Christian type; the numerous confraternities (tariqah) to which it gave rise are associations of the faithful who neither practise celibacy nor live together, but are united only by a rule (tariqah, whence the name) consisting in particular devotions, and who meet only at intervals in the convent (sāwīqah, tekkē, etc.) for the communal celebration of the ḍikr. This name, corresponding to the Mvāyā of the Eastern monks, is given to the recitation of formulas and litanies, to which some confraternities add songs and dances intended to produce ecstasy artificially, accompanied by displays of cataleptic insensibility.
The ṣ. had to sustain a long struggle before being received into orthodoxy, which was alarmed by its Christianizing ideal of a secluded life, by the theory of ecstatic union, in which it suspected an offensive return of the Christian dogma of the Incarnation, by its irreverent criticisms of theologians and canonists, and by its propaganda based on strange notions and paradoxes, often heretical in sound even if not in intention: as when disinterestedness in actions was recommended even in the form of indifference to the rewards of Paradise, and the mosque, the church, the synagogue, and the temple of the idolaters were provocatively placed on the same level, while the heart alone was proclaimed God’s sanctuary. The theologians were also offended by the theopathic locutions that had become literary exercises, by the accusations of polytheism directed against other Muslims, by the abuse of erotic and bacchic songs to depict the spiritual nuptials and the drunkenness of ecstasy, and by the doctrine of a secret knowledge communicated by God to 'Alī for the use of the elect, simultaneously with the revelation given to Muhammad for the common people. Cases of outright antiritualism and antinomianism, syncretistic collusion with religions superseded by Islam, and understandings with heretical and subversive sects frequently provoked repressive measures. But moderate and prudent mystics such as Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī (d. 996), al-Gunajd (d. 909–10), al-Qušajrī (d. 1074), and above all al-Gazzālī (d. 1111), the great synthesizer of Sunnism, succeeded in reconciling mysticism with dogmatics and canon law, to the great benefit of Islam, which emerged spiritualized. Ibn 'Arabī and his school seemed to disrupt the balance that had been achieved, but they too benefited from broad Sunni toleration. The irreconcilable adversaries of the ṣ. remain the ḥanbalites.