Milad Milani - Sufi Political Thought

Milad Milani

First published 2018
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2018 Milad Milani

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Milani, Milad, author.
Title: Sufi political thought / Milad Milani.
Description: New York, NY : Routledge, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017023114| ISBN 9781138787643 (hbk) | ISBN 9781315766294 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Sufism--Political aspects. | Islam and politics.
Classification: LCC BP188.6 .M55 2017 | DDC 320.55/7--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017023114

ISBN: 978-1-138-78764-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-76629-4 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman
by Sunrise Setting Ltd, Brixham, UK

Sufism has, in the West, been treated as primarily the leading branch of Islamic mysticism and hence characterised by its a-political, esoteric, and passive character. For example, the German sociologist Max Weber, whose work continues to dominate much of the sociological study of religion, described Sufism in terms of its passionate devotion, its cultivation of ecstasy, and its joyous lyricism in his book The Sociology of Religion (1922). He thought that, because of its irrational and extraordinary character, Sufism did not produce a methodical control over the life world. In that regard, it was unlike the asceticism that was typical of the Protestant sects. While noting the missionary influence of popular Sufism in the global diffusion of Islam, Weber nowhere connects Sufism with politics or the state. Sufism spread, not as a warrior religion in Webers terms, but as a network of saints and their orders or tariqahs.

Against this background, Milad Milanis encyclopaedic study of the origins, development, and continuity of Sufism is a challenge to many taken-for-granted assumptions that persist in contemporary scholarship. Sufi Political Thought is, however, not only in confrontation with conventional sociological interpretations, but it is also a challenge to the orthodox Sunni interpretation of Sufism as a sectarian deviation from the mainstream. For Milani, there is no stationary, ideal, puritanical, or continuous Islam. Rather, Islam is an open tradition within which Sufism has been the major conduit of cultural exchange between religion and its external environment. The heterogeneity and complexity of Sufism is not a deviation from Islam but it is rather a living, dynamic, and fruitful engagement with other cultures and traditions, especially Christianity, from an Islamic standpoint. Consequently, Sufism represents the cosmopolitan, urbane, and outward-looking face of Islamic tradition(s). It has been open to the outside world throughout its existence. One major influence was, of course, from Persia, but Milani sees Sufism as essentially Islam in and through Asia. However, Sufism has drawn from many sources including, and especially, Christian mysticism and monasticism, giving a special place in its theology for Jesus as the perfect Sufi. In addition, Sufism has a tradition of martyrs who, like their Christian counter-parts, are witnesses to the working of the divine in human history.

As an intermediary between the world of Islam and the external world, Sufism has continuously mediated the religious and the political, while never allowing that dialectic to unfold into religious withdrawal or political dominance. Consequently, Sufis had to constantly negotiate a role between different states and different cultures as part of its external framework, and to negotiate a relationship with other Islamic traditions. In these diverse encounters they developed a politics of knowledge (what is authentic? What is true?) and a politics of religion (what is valid? What is authoritative?). Politics could never be avoided.

In modern times, Muslims, faced with the challenge of western secularism, have, perhaps unsurprisingly, constructed an authentic, puritan, ideal Islam that has sought to close itself off from both external cultural and religious forces. Milani thus understands the Islamic world as caught in a struggle between an exclusive and narrow puritanism promoting a selective, integrated, and idealistic view of Islamic history and an inclusive, evolving, and dynamic Islam through the medium of Sufi spirituality.