The Sufi Path
“Sufism is a name without a reality, but it used to be a reality without a name.”
Encompassed in this quote of Ali ibn Ahmad Bushanji is the prevailing theme of the given text on Sufism, namely, that it is a tradition without easily made boundaries. This article begins by establishing Sufism as a religious tradition close to Islam, but one that cannot be squarely fit into any convenient categorization, as it actively resents any scholarly domestication and definition. This resistance is endemic to the Islamic texts, and is equally reflected in the modern attempts of understanding these primary sources. This article acts not as another attempt to define and contain Sufism, but as an attempt to delineate the reality in which it exists.
Despite the distance embedded between the two traditions among modern Westerners and Muslims alike, Sufism and Islam share a kindred connection. From the point of view of early Sufi teachers, Sufism was believed to be the “animating spirit of the Islamic tradition.” In the story of the Prophet “Hadith of Gabriel,” the foundational tenants of the Islamic faith are laid forth, taught by the Prophet as three themes which remained significant within the Koran—“submission (islam), “faith” (iman), and “doing the beautiful” (ihsan). Of these, the Sufis take interest in the doing of the beautiful, a theme mostly disregarded elsewhere within Islamic scholarship. The majority of work within Islamic scholarship finds its center as codification of religious law and the establishment of a system of ethics. This extends not only to morality, but to the practitioners’ cosmological understanding, herein incorporating both “submission” and “faith.” Within the dialogue of the Hadith of Gabriel, there exists additionally three domains of faith—body (encompassing action), tongue (encompassing thought and understanding), and the depths of the heart (encompassing perception and self-concepts). Of these three domains, the last is put into the domain of the Sufis, who anticipate the other two domains to come forth from the perfection of one’s perceptions.
Moving into a discussion of the Shahadah, this article further outlines the main aspects of Islam. As written here, Shahadah is understood as the “testimony of faith,” that admittance of the monolithic nature of God and the recognition of Muhammad as His messenger. In understanding what it means to be “doing the beautiful,” it’s necessary to understand the place of human beings in respect to God. For Muslims, this relation takes the form of a practiced perfection of the bearing witness to God. In the expression of such a practice lies Sufism, described here as “an invisible spiritual presence that animates all authentic expressions of Islam.” However, it was known by the Sufis the structural risk of institutionalizing ideals which mark the road to an experience of human perfection available to only “rare individuals,” cueing into the explanation of Sufism as a name without a reality.
In the discussion of mercy and wrath, the author of this article explains the origin of the two attributes as the Sufi reduction of the plurality which emerges from a God-created universe. Liked to the yin and yang concept of Chinese philosophy, Sufis understand the dependent and complicated nature of mercy and wrath. In terms of divine value however, “God’s mercy takes precedence over His wrath, which is to say that God’s essential nature is mercy and gentleness, and that wrath and severity pertain to the domain of created things.” In seeking divine mercy and ultimate beauty, the Sufis find deep connection with the concept of love. Love in Sufism is taken alongside mercy as a cause of creation, taking a bidirectional relationship with God that is unlike mercy. In tangent with the first Shahadah, Sufism holds that there exists no reality that is apart from God, but there is discernment among the world of clarity is representations of God. Revelation elevates one through “ignorance and illusion, immersed in the unreal things that veil from the truth,” a truth present within the teachings of the Koran as “signs”. This dichotomy of veils and signs is important to Sufism as a guiding principle of their religious practice.
