Sufism

A Beginner's Guide

William C. Chittick

• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781780740522
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

What is mysticism? What does sufism mean today? William C. Chittick, the leading scholar in the field, offers a compelling insight into the origins, context, and key themes of this fascinating movement. After a general overview of the tradition, he draws upon the words of some of the greatest Sufi writers - among them Ibn Arabi, Baha Walad and Rumi himself - to give a fresh and revealing perspective on the teachings and beliefs of Sufism and its proponents. Fresh and authoritative, this sympathetic book will be appreciated by anyone interested in Sufism, from complete beginners to students, scholars and experts alike.

1

The Sufi path

More than a thousand years ago, a teacher called Ali the son of Ahmad, who hailed from the town of Bushanj in eastern Persia, complained that few people had any idea of what “Sufism” was all about. “Today,” he said, speaking Arabic, “Sufism is a name without a reality, but it used to be a reality without a name.”

Nowadays in the West, the name has become better known, but its reality has become far more obscure than it ever was in the Islamic world. The name is a useful label, but the reality will not be found in definitions, descriptions, and books. If we do set out looking for the reality, we will always have to keep in mind that the divide between our own times and the times of Ali ibn Ahmad Bushanji – when the various phenomena that came to be named “Sufism” were just beginning to have a shaping effect on Islamic society – is so deep and stark that it may be impossible to recover anything more than the dimmest trace of it.

One easy way to avoid searching for Sufism’s reality is to replace the name with another name. We often hear that Sufism is “mysticism” or “esoterism” or “spirituality,” usually with the adjective “Islamic” tacked on front. Such labels can provide an orientation, but they are both far too broad and far too narrow to designate the diverse teachings and phenomena that have been identified with Sufism over history. They can never do more than hint at the reality Bushanji had in mind, and they may be more of a hindrance than a help, because they encourage people to file Sufism away unthinkingly into a convenient category. In order to justify using one of these alternative names, we would have to provide a detailed and careful definition and analysis of the new term, and the three I mentioned are notoriously vague. Even if we could provide an adequate definition, we would still have to explain why it is appropriate for “Sufism.” That would lead to picking and choosing among Sufi and scholarly writings to support our own definition. We may get closer to the reality of our definition, but probably not to the reality that Bushanji was talking about.

Rather than trying to domesticate Sufism by giving it a more familiar label, we should recognize at the outset that there is something in the Sufi tradition that abhors domestication and definition. It may be helpful to suggest that Sufism has a family resemblance with other traditions – such as Kabbalah, Christian mysticism, Yoga, Vedanta, or Zen – but making this connection does not necessarily help us get any closer to Sufism itself.

If we look at the Arabic original of the word Sufism (sufi), we see that the term is already problematic in Islamic civilization. Although it was widely used in several languages, it usually did not have the broad meaning that it has now acquired. Its current high profile owes itself mainly to the writings of Western scholars. As Carl Ernst has pointed out in his excellent introduction to the study of Sufism, the word was given prominence not by the Islamic texts, but rather by British Orientalists, who wanted a term that would refer to various sides of Islamic civilization that they found attractive and congenial and that would avoid the negative stereotypes associated with the religion of Islam – stereotypes that they themselves had often propagated.¹

In the Islamic texts, there is no agreement as to what the word sufi means, and authors commonly argued about both its meaning and its legitimacy. Those who used the word in a positive sense connected it with a broad range of ideas and concepts having to do with achieving human perfection by following the model of the prophet Muhammad. Those who used it in a negative sense associated it with various distortions of Islamic teachings. Most Muslim authors who mentioned the word took a more nuanced stand, neither accepting it wholeheartedly nor condemning it.

The modern studies of Sufism reflect the disagreements over the word found in the primary texts. Scholars do not agree among themselves as to what the name means, and any number of definitions and descriptions can be culled from their studies. I will not add to the confusion by providing my own definition, but I will use the word because it seems less inadequate than the alternatives. My purpose, however, will be to try to get at the reality behind the name, to provide a series of pointers at the moon.

The Islamic context

It is not uncommon to meet people in the West who are familiar with certain Sufi teachings and practices but who are ignorant of, or would deny, anything more than an accidental relationship between Sufism and Islam. There are books that enthusiastically acclaim Sufism as an exalted wellspring of spirituality and beauty, while considering Islam, if it is mentioned at all, in terms of the stereotypes that have haunted the West since the Middle Ages. This commonly encountered view of Sufism has been strengthened by the reaction of many modern-day Muslims against it. The great historian of Islamic civilization, H. A. R. Gibb, pointed out fifty years ago that such Muslims look upon Sufism either as a “survival of superstitions” and “cultural backwardness” or as a deviation from “true Islam.” Gibb was sufficiently sensitive to Sufism’s reality to perceive that such attitudes seem bent on “eliminating the expression of authentic religious experience” from the Islamic world.²

In short, many people, both Muslims and non-Muslims, consider “Sufism” as alien to “Islam,” however these two terms are defined. But, from the first appearance of teachers who came to be designated as Sufis in the ninth century (the third Islamic century), they have always claimed to speak for the heart and marrow of the Islamic tradition. My first task here is to try to shed some light on their point of view. What role did they accord Sufism within Islam? This question is not as irrelevant today as some people might think, because most of those who now speak for the Sufi tradition – at least within the Islamic world itself – have kept the same understanding.

In the early texts, scores of definitions were offered for the words “Sufi” and “Sufism,” just as scores of definitions were offered for numerous other technical terms associated with the same teachers.³ Although it would be possible to begin with one or more of these definitions, it may be more useful simply to suggest that Gibb is on the right track when he implies that Sufism is equivalent to “authentic religious experience.” In other words, the early Sufi teachers held that they spoke for the animating spirit of the Islamic tradition. From their point of view, wherever this spirit flourishes, Islam is alive to its own spiritual and moral ideals, but to the extent that it languishes, Islam becomes desiccated and sterile, if it survives at all. This identification of Sufism with Islam’s spirit is prefigured in a famous saying of the Prophet known as the “Hadith of Gabriel.” Reflecting on the content of this saying can help us situate Sufism’s reality in relation to other realities that were given names over the course of Islamic history.

According to this hadith, the Prophet and a few of his companions were sitting together when a man appeared and asked him several questions. When the man departed, the Prophet told his companions that this had been the angel Gabriel, who had come to teach them their religion (din). As outlined by Gabriel’s questions and the Prophet’s answers, the religion of Islam can be understood to have three basic dimensions. Those familiar with the Koran, the wellspring of Islamic teachings, will recognize these three as constant Koranic themes, though nowhere does the Koran provide such a clear and succinct overview. The three are “submission” (islam), “faith” (iman), and “doing the beautiful” (ihsan).⁴

The Prophet defined submission as “to bear witness that there is no god but God and that Muhammad is His messenger, to perform the daily prayers, to pay the alms tax, to fast during Ramadan, and to go on the pilgrimage to Mecca if you can find the means to do so.” He said that faith is “to have faith in God, His angels, His scriptures, His messengers, and the Last Day, and to have faith in the measuring out, both the good of it and the evil of it.” He said that doing the beautiful is to “worship God as if you see Him, for even if you do not see Him, He sees you.”

The first two categories, “submission” and “faith,” are familiar to all students of Islam. They correspond to the religion’s “Five Pillars” and its “three principles,” or to practice and belief, or to the Sharia (the revealed law) and the creedal teachings. The “Five Pillars” are voicing the testimony of faith, doing the daily prayers, paying the alms tax, fasting during the month of Ramadan, and making the pilgrimage to Mecca. The “three principles” are the assertion of divine unity (tawhid), prophecy, and eschatology. What needs to be noticed is that the third category mentioned in the hadith – “doing the beautiful” – is just as important for the Prophet’s definition as the other two, but its meaning is not nearly as clear.

“Doing the beautiful” is not discussed by the most vocal of the scholars who speak for Islam, that is, the jurists (fuquha’). By self-definition they limit their field of vision to the Sharia, which defines the Five Pillars and the other practices that Muslims need to perform. Nor is doing the beautiful discussed by a second influential group of scholars, the theologians (mutakallimun), who are the experts in the science of Kalam, or dogmatic theology. Their concern is to articulate and defend creedal teachings, which establish and explain the meaning of the three principles. Neither of these schools of thought has the interest or the competence – qua jurists and theologians – to deal with doing the beautiful, so we would be wasting our time if we read their books looking for an explanation. It is the Sufis who take doing the beautiful as their own special domain.

In order to understand why the great Sufi teachers considered themselves genuine Muslims deeply involved with everything that God and Muhammad have asked from human beings, we need to grasp the logic of this tripartite division of the Islamic tradition and the special role played by doing the beautiful.

On the most external level, Islam is a religion that tells people what to do and what not to do. Right and wrong practices are delineated and codified by the Sharia, which is a compendium of systematic law based squarely on Koranic teachings and prophetic practice, but adjusted and refined by generations of scholars. The Sharia can be likened to Islam’s “body,” because it designates proper activities, all of which are performed by the body, and because it supports the tradition’s life and awareness.

On a deeper level, Islam is a religion that teaches people how to understand the world and themselves. This second dimension corresponds to the mind. It has traditionally been called “faith,” because its points of orientation are the objects to which faith attaches – God, the angels, the scriptures, the prophets, and so on. These are mentioned constantly in the Koran and the Hadith, and investigation of their nature and reality became the domain of various disciplines, such as Kalam, philosophy, and theoretical Sufism. Any serious attempt to investigate these objects globally cannot fail to investigate the deepest questions of human concern. The great philosophers, mathematicians, astronomers, and physicians of Islam, who have been studied and admired by many Western historians, were trained in this dimension of the religion. So also, the most famous of the Sufis were thoroughly grounded in the theoretical knowledge of the objects of faith.

On the deepest level, Islam is a religion that teaches people how to transform themselves so that they may come into harmony with the ground of all being. Neither activity nor understanding, nor both together, are humanly sufficient. Activity and understanding need to be focused in such a way that they bring about human goodness and perfection. This goodness is inherent and intrinsic to the original human disposition (fitra), created in God’s image. If the first dimension of Islam keeps in view the activities that must be performed because of our relational situation with God and others, and the second our understanding of self and others, the third points the way to achieving nearness to God. For those with any sensitivity to the religious life, the various terms that are employed in discussing the focus of this third dimension are immediately recognizable as the heart of religion. These include sincerity, love, virtue, and perfection.

Three domains of faith

The Hadith of Gabriel talks about iman or “faith” in terms of its objects, and these specify points of reference that are needed to understand the nature of things. In another hadith, the Prophet spoke about the meaning of the word iman itself. “Faith,” he said, “is to acknowledge with the heart, to voice with the tongue, and to act with the limbs.”⁵ This hadith suggests that human beings are compounded of three domains ranked in a clear hierarchy – heart or inmost awareness, tongue or articulation of understanding, and limbs or bodily parts. These three domains are distinct, yet thoroughly intertwined. Inasmuch as they are distinct, they came to be studied by different disciplines and judged by different standards.

“Acting with the limbs,” or putting faith into practice, is the domain of jurisprudence. It is here that people “submit” to God’s will by obeying the commands set down in the Sharia.

“Voicing with the tongue” is the realm of expressing faith through articulated self-awareness, or rational speech. Human beings are differentiated from other animals precisely by their power of speech, which expresses and conveys the awareness hidden in the depths of the heart. As a domain of learning, voicing faith belonged to those Muslim scholars who investigated the best ways to understand God, the universe, and the human soul.

Finally, “acknowledging with the heart” is to recognize the truth and reality of faith’s objects in the deepest realm of human awareness. The “heart” in Koranic terms is the center of life, consciousness, intelligence, and intentionality. The heart is aware and conscious before the mind articulates thought, just as it is alive before the body acts. Faith’s inmost core is found only in the heart. The Prophet seems to be referring to this core when he says, “Faith is a light that God casts into the heart of whomsoever He will.”

The Prophet’s tripartite definition of faith designates the same three domains as the Hadith of Gabriel – body, tongue, and heart; or activity, thought, and awareness. The body’s realm is defined by the Sharia, the tongue’s realm is expressed in theology (in its various forms, not simply Kalam), and the heart’s realm is associated with doing the beautiful in the depths of the soul. To achieve the last, the heart must be rooted in awareness of truth and reality in a pre-cognitive manner. Beautiful acts must well up from the depths of the heart spontaneously, before mental articulation and physical activity. More will be said about what this implies as we go along. This is only the first finger pointing at the moon.

In short, the Islamic tradition recognizes three basic domains of religiosity – body, tongue, and the depths of the heart. These are the domains of right doing, right thinking, and right seeing. The last is an inner awareness of the reality of things that is inseparable from our mode of being in the world. The three realms can also be called perfection of acts, perfection of understanding, and perfection of self. All three are understood and conceptualized as ideals that must be realized in order to live up to the potentialities that were given to human beings when God created Adam in His own image.

These three domains were intensely scrutinized by serious Muslims – those who came to be known as the Muslim “scholars” (ulama’). The domain of right activity was the specialty of jurists, that of right thinking the specialty of theologians, and that of right seeing the specialty of Sufis. “O God,” the Sufis like to quote the Prophet as saying, “show us things as they are.” One does not see things as they are with the eyes or the mind, but rather with the core of the heart. From the heart, right seeing will then radiate forth and permeate every pore of the body, determining thought and activity.

The Shahadah

In this brief outline of the basics of Islam, it is important to notice the primary place accorded to the dual Shahadah or “testimony of faith.” This is to bear witness that “There is no god but God” and that “Muhammad is His messenger.” The Shahadah provides the key to understanding the Islamic perspective in all domains.

In the definition of “submission,” the Shahadah is listed as the first required act of Muslims. By verbally acknowledging the reality of God and the prophetic role of Muhammad, one makes the other four pillars and the Sharia incumbent upon oneself.

The Shahadah also defines the content of faith, whose primary element is faith in God. The nature of the God in whom Muslims have faith is set down briefly by the first Shahadah, while all the objects of faith are conceptualized in terms of the concomitants of t...