Since the eighteenth century, adherence to Sufism, the mystical
tradition of Islam, has been associated with membership in one of
the Sufi brotherhoods. These brotherhoods constitute distinct
religious communities within the general community of Islam. Jamil
M. Abun-Nasr describes them as "communities of grace" because his
readings in Sufi hagiographies have convinced him that divine grace
is the central element of their system of beliefs.
In his reconstruction of the development of the Sufi tradition,
Abun-Nasr examines the emergence of Sufism's central tenets and the
factors that account for their appeal to Muslims in different
lands. Drawing on original Sufi sources, he contends that, in their
formative period, Sufi tenets were shaped by the caliphs' inability
to live up to the ideal the Prophet represented in the Muslim
community: that political leadership was a subordinate function of
religious guidance. He also contends that the Sufi brotherhoods'
form of religious communalism emerged from the adaptation of the
spiritual authority that Sufis ascribed to their leaders to the
Muslims' major pious concerns. In the last two chapters Abun-Nasr
examines the reaction of the Sufi brotherhoods' shaykhs to European
colonial rule, the campaign directed against them by Muslim
reformers of the Salafiyya school, and the reliance of the
independent Muslim states' rulers on their support in counteracting
the hostility of the Muslim reformers, as well as, since the 1970s,
the Islamists, to their secular development plans.
General
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