LESSON 21
THE DEVELOPMENT OF SÛFISM

Sûfism is a movement in Islam concerned with the life of prayer. It endeavours to go beyond the mere external ritual of obligatory salât by emphasising the interior aspect of prayer and experiencing God directly as the true reality (al-haqq). In pursuing this experience the Sûfic brotherhoods have developed a great variety of supplementary prayer. The early Sûfî groups, in the second century after Muhammad, used to wear a kind of religious habit made of wool (= sûf in Arabic), giving rise to the name "Sûfism", or "Sûfî for a member of the movement. Besides satisfying a religious need, Sûfism fed on the dissatisfaction of people with the worldly and corrupt life of the Muslim ruling class.

From the beginning, Islam was concerned with both the next world and this, with worship of God in expectation of the rewards of the next life and with the reform of society. These two concerns gave rise to a certain tension. Many of the early Muslims began to give themselves to prolonged prayer, vigils and fasting, but after Muhammad and his followers migrated from Mecca to Medina, they had to give up such practices because the demands of warfare and statecraft. In later Islam this activist tendency was reflected in hadîths condemning monasticism.

Nevertheless, the Qur'ân insistently invites people to direct their thoughts to God; it proclaims of God's power over all things, his knowledge of all things, including the secrets of men's hearts, his otherness from everything that comes and goes, yet his all embracive nearness (50:16; 2:115,186), his kindness, yet his demanding severity. Even while there is no sharing in God's nature or union with him, the Qur'ân speaks of drawing near to God, of seeing him in the next life (75:23) and of the value of constantly being aware of him and preferring his favour to all the passing goods of this world (55:26-27).

An important early Sûfî was Râbi`a al-`Adawiyya (d. 801), a woman recluse. Proclaiming disinterested love of God, she was met one day carrying a torch in one hand and water with the other. Asked what these were for, she replied: "I am going to burn up heaven and quench the fires of hell, so that these two screens may fall away from the eyes of men, and they may see God with no motive of hope or fear. It is too bad that men will not worship or obey God without these two motives." She was speaking to Muslims who considered heaven primarily a Paradise of sensual enjoyments.

At this time other Sûfîs elaborated theories of stages in the spiritual life, teaching that only the vision of God's essence gives perfect happiness. They emphasized ascetic training so as to get at the centre of one's being and view there, as in a mirror, the attributes of God. Their theories were based on their experience of absorption in God in trances.

Al-Hallâj (858-922) is the greatest of the early Sûfîs. From an early age he associated with ûfic circles. Coming back to Baghdad after a pilgrimage of Mecca in 895, he began preaching to all classes of people, urging them to repent because of God's impending judgement, to offer themselves to God in prayer and to love him. He alienated religious leaders by working wonders and by teaching that a person can be perfectly joined to God and then his actions become God's actions as well as his own. Al-Hallâj was then charged for: (1) assuming the equivalent of a prophetic role and (2) teaching the Manichean idea that the soul is a divine spark imprisoned in the body and gravitating back to God, and (3) saying things like "I am the Truth (God)" in moments of trance. In 922 he was condemned to death. Scourged, cut open, crucified and beheaded, the ashes of his burned body were thrown into the Tigris. A line from on of his poems runs: "I will die in the religion of the cross; Mecca and Medina mean nothing more to me", meaning that he had to go to God through suffering in love.

Al-Ghazâlî (1059-111), the greatest theologian in the Muslim world in his time, found in Sûfism the remedy for a crisis in his own life. His endorsement of Sûfism gave it an accepted place in Islam, under certain conditions. The Sûfîs could claim: (1) a love which brings nearness to God, but not union or indwelling reappeared in later ûfism) (2) spiritual advancement, but no dispensation from the ordinary observances of Muslims, and (3) divinely wrought wonders, but not strict miracles which are worked by God as proof that the person is a prophet. Another figure of this period is `Abdalqâdir al-Jîlânî (d. 1166) of Baghdad, from whom derives the important brotherhood of the Qâdiriyya.

Ibn-al-Fârid (d. 1235) and especially the Spaniard Ibn-`Arabî (d. 1240) led Sûfism in the direction of pantheism. Thus, while al-Hallâj earlier said:

I am the one I love and the one I love is I;
we are two spirits melted in one body,

Ibn-Fârid (d. 1235) appears to obliterate the distinction between God and man:

And I was whom I loved without a doubt...
My saluting her is thus but metaphorical;
my greeting is from me unto me, in reality.

By the 16th century Sûfism had developed techniques for anyone to put himself into an ecstatic trance with ease. Sûfism turned into a popular pastime, with whirling dervish dancing, miracle demonstrations such as fire eating, sword tricks, snake charming, and exaggerated veneration of holy men both living and dead. Many objectionable practices were eliminated by the reform movements of the late 19th century and early 20th century, but fundamentalist objection to Sûfism still remains. In Nigeria the fundamentalist Izala movement has conducted a vigorous but unsuccessful campaign to suppress Sûfism.

Sûfî brotherhoods emerged around the second half of the 8th century as the early great Sûfîs began to attract followers. These gathered under the guidance of a shaykh, but regulations were few and the disciples' direct guidance by God was paramount.

By 1100, as Sûfism through al-Ghazâlî became an accepted movement and came under the control of the jurists, guidance by a rule became paramount. Sûfic teaching and methods of producing altered states of consciousness were developed and transmitted by a chain of authority.

By the 15th century ûfism became a popular movement and new orders and cells multiplied at an amazing rate. These focussed on the shaykh or holy man himself, and guidance under his absolute authority "like a corpse in the hands of its washer" became paramount. The authority of a shaykh is validated by a chain of authority going back to the founder of the order and others, ultimately reaching `Alî and then Muhammad, who is portrayed as the first of God's creation, through whom all blessings flow.

The initiation of a disciple into an order includes any of several elements, each of which is validated by a chain of authority: 1) dressing the disciple in the habit of the order, 2) giving the disciple dates and water as a gesture of hospitality, 3) clasping the hand of the disciple to show the bond between him and his shaykh, 4) the conferring of a rosary, 5) instruction in the divine names the disciple is to recite for his private dhikr, and 6) spitting into the mouth of the disciple.

There is often a hierarchy uniting the local groups of an order, and sometimes an international head, but their control is loose, operating mainly through attraction to their personal holiness and power. A ûfî becomes a shaykh sometimes by inheritance from his father, sometimes by election, and sometimes by designation by another shaykh who gives a licence. Sometimes authority is claimed directly from divine intervention, as when the founder of the Tijâniyya claimed to have had a vision of Muhammad making him the shaykh of a new order.

The oldest order in Nigeria is the Qâdiriyya, to which `Uthmân an Fodiye belonged. It is strongest in Sokoto. Related to the traditional Qâdiriyya are the reformed Qâdiriyya, centred in Kano, and the Usmaniyya (after `Uthmân an Fodiye, and promoted by the late Sardauna of Sokoto Ahmadu Bello), centred in Kaduna. The traditional Tijâniyya is found in Zaria and Katsina, but the reformed Tijâniyya, founded by Ibrâhîm Niass of Kaolack, Senegal, is widespread over all West Africa. The Northeast of Nigeria has almost no presence of orders, except for the Mahdiyya in Adamawa, a small rural group associated with the Mahdism of Sudan.

QUESTIONS

1. Explain the attraction of Sûfism for early Muslims; compare with Christian spiritual movements.
2. Explain why some Muslims have opposed Sûfism in the past and now; compare with the problem of discerning spirituality in the Church.
3. Describe the evolution of Sûfî brotherhoods; compare with Christian lay societies.
4. Name and describe the Sûfî brotherhoods present in your country or area.

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West Africa and Islam

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