“War on terror”-style rhetoric was not always directed against Salafi jihadis. Its targets were once Sufi Muslims. It is hard to believe that Sufism, which today is associated with political quietism and docile pacifism, was…
Rachida Chih, Sufism in Ottoman Egypt: Circulation, Renewal and Authority in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (New York: Routledge, 2019). 180pp., $39.16 (paperback), ISBN: 9780367730451 | Reviewed by Ida Sofie Nitter “The university was where…
In this episode of History Speaks, Saadia Yacoob speaks with Oludamini Ogunnaike and Sara Abdel-Latif about the self and society in Sufi thought from its early formative period in Nishapur to the early modern and…
We are living amid crises. The deterioration of the metaphysical universe under modernity and the current denigration of biological life at a planetary scale forces us to rethink who we are as human beings. The…
Though we conceptualize the political and the religious as distinct, in practice, they remain very intertwined, especially in many Muslim-majority countries. Understanding one is crucial in understanding the other. In the case of Muslim-majority countries,…
In Charles Taylor’s magnum opus, A Secular Age, he makes a series of wonderful distinctions about the pre-modern and modern worlds. Among these is the idea that modernity entails a loss of enchantment, a move…
Ottoman Sufis were often criticized for engaging in bidʿa or innovative interpretations of Islamic texts by their orthodox opponents, such as the Qāḍīzādeh ʿulamā’. In their writings, members of the Qāḍīzādeh ʿulamā’ subjected Sufi treatises…
The name Khan is trending. One Khan – Imran Khan – is now the PM of Pakistan, another, Sadiq Khan, is the Mayor of London, and in the US, Khizer Khan, a five star dad,…
Introduction This paper aims to provide an overview of the historical and contemporary developments of the Xidaotang 西道堂 (lit. “Western Path Hall” or “Western Daotang [1]”), a Chinese Muslim community. First, I will examine the…
Preface Two of the highest modes of expression developed by humankind are poetry and philosophy. The poet speaks to us through verse, and the philosopher through prose, each one inviting us into their realm of…