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Sufis and Salafis in the
Contemporary Age

Also available from Bloomsbury
Sufism in Britain, Edited by Ron Geaves and Theodore Gabriel
South Asian Sufis, Edited by Clinton Bennett and Charles M. Ramsay
The Bloomsbury Companion to Islamic Studies, Edited by Clinton Bennett
Sufism, Mahdism and Nationalism, by Douglas H. Thomas

Sufis and Salafis in the
Contemporary Age
Edited by Lloyd Ridgeon
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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First published 2015
© Lloyd Ridgeon and Contributors, 2015
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Paperback edition ﬁ rst published 2016
ISBN: HB: 978-1-4725-2387-7
PB: 978-1-3500-1238-7
ePDF: 978-1-4725-3223-7
ePub: 978-1-4725-2919-0
Suﬁ s and salaﬁ s in the contemporary age / edited by Lloyd Ridgeon.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4725-2387-7 (hardback)
1. Suﬁ sm. 2. Salaﬁ yah. 3. Mysticism–Islam. 4. Islamic fundamentalism.
5. Islamic sects. I. Ridgeon, Lloyd V. J.
BP189.2.S785 2015
297.4–dc23
2014046377

Contents
Contributor List vii
Introduction Lloyd Ridgeon 1
1 Modernity from Within: Islamic Fundamentalism and
Sufism Itzchak Weismann
9
2 Egyptian Sufism Under the Hammer: A Preliminary Investigation
into the Anti-Sufi Polemics of ‘Abd al-Rahman
al-Wakil (1913–70) Richard Gauvain
33
3 Mapping Modern Turkish Sufism and
Anti-Sufism Alberto Fabio Ambrosio
59
4 The Shrines of Shaykh ʿAbd al-Qadir al-Jilani in Baghdad
and his Son in ʿAqra: Current Challenges in Facing
Salafism Noorah Al-Gailani
71
5 The Political Participation of Sufi and Salafi Movements in Modern
Morocco: Between the ‘2003 Casablanca Terrorist Attack’
and the ‘Moroccan Spring’ Aziz el Kobaiti Idrissi
91
6 Sufis as ‘Good Muslims’: Sufism in the Battle against Jihadi
Salafism Mark Sedgwick
1 05
7 Mystical Traditions and Voices of Dissent: Experiences from
Bengal Kashshaf Ghani
1 19
8 Representing the Detractors of Sufism in Twentieth-Century
Hyderabad, India Mauro Valdinoci
1 47

Contentsvi
9 Barelwis: Developments and Dynamics of Conflict with
Deobandis Thomas K. Gugler
171
10 The Contested Milieu of Deoband: ‘Salafis’ or ‘Sufis’? Ron Geaves 191
Notes 217
Bibliography 275
Index 299

Contributor List
Alberto Fabio Ambrosio, adjunct at the Université de Lorraine (Metz) and
CETOBAC/EHESS Associate Researcher, was born in Fano (Italy) in 1971.
Having read philosophy and theology in Bologna, he then undertook Turkish
in Strasbourg. In 2007 he finished his doctoral studies in modern history at
the University of Paris (Sorbonne) on the history of the Whirling Dervishes.
Then, he received the Habilitation to teach theology in 2013 at the University of
Metz. He is currently pursuing his research on Turkish Islam. His publications
include Vie d’un Derviche Tourneur: Doctrine et Rituels du Soufisme au XVIIe
siècle (2010); Soufisme et Christianisme: Entre Histoire et Mystique (2013); Soufis
à Istanbul: Hier, Aujourd’hui (2014).
Noorah Al-Gailani is a final-year postgraduate research student at the University
of Glasgow, studying the material culture of two Sufi Qadiri shrines in Iraq – in
Baghdad and in ʿAqra. Her thesis is on the changing identities of Iraqi Sufism
with special focus on the Qadiriyya in Baghdad and ʿAqra. She is also the curator
of Islamic Civilisations at Glasgow Museums, based at The Burrell Collection. In
addition to Islamic art, Noorah’s interests also include intercultural and interfaith
encounters and their evidence in material culture.
Richard Gauvain has lived in the Middle East since 2002. He taught
comparative religions at the American University in Cairo; helped set up
a Middle East Studies Program at the American University in Dubai; and
is currently associate dean of Arts and Sciences at the American University
in Ras al-Khaimah. In the widest sense, his research focuses on the creative
intersections between culture and religion in concrete settings within the region.
He is the author of Salafi Ritual Purity: In the Presence of God, a monograph
on modern Egyptian Salafi attitudes to, and regulations surrounding, the ritual-
legal theme of purity; and has written articles on various aspects of Muslim life
in the Middle East. His current research explores the wide range of relationships,
formal and informal, between Muslims and Christians in the United Arab
Emirates.

Contributor Listviii
Ron Geaves is currently visiting professor in the Department of History,
Archaeology and Religion, based in the Centre of the Study of Muslims in
Britain at Cardiff University and visiting professor of Muslim Culture and
Enterprise at University College Suffolk, previously holding Chairs in Religious
Studies at the University of Chester (2001–7) and in the Comparative Study of
Religion at Liverpool Hope University (2007–13). Professor Geaves remains
active in research. Usually, his research is contemporary in focus and involves
ethnographic study, although recently he has embarked on the historical study
of the Muslim presence in Britain. He has written and edited nineteen books
and contributed to around twenty-five edited collections and numerous journal
articles. He is the founding editor of the journal Fieldwork in Religion. His works
include Sectarian Influences in Islam in Britain (1994), Sufis in Britain (2000),
Islam and the West Post 9/11 (2004), Aspects of Islam (2005), Islam Today (2010),
Islam in Victorian Britain: The Life and Times of Abdullah Quilliam (2010), Sufis
of Britain (2014). He is currently working on the history of Islam in Britain in the
Edwardian era, the Deobandi movement, and an edited collection of Abdullah
Quilliam’s writings.
Kashshaf Ghani is an assistant professor at the School of Historical Studies,
Nalanda University. He obtained his PhD in history from the University of
Calcutta (2011) with a dissertation on Sufi rituals and practices across orders in
South Asia. His fields of interest include Sufism, Islam in South Asia and Muslim
societies, with a focus on pre-modern India (1000–1800). He has held research
positions at the Asiatic Society, Kolkata as the inaugural Sir Amir Ali Fellow; at
the University of Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris as the inaugural Perso-Indica fellow
and also at the Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin. His postdoctoral interests
include colonial South Asia, where he explores Indo-Persian cultures along with
transcultural and transregional networks in Muslim communities across South
and West Asia.
Thomas K. Gugler graduated in South Asian studies, religious studies and
psychology from Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and did his PhD in
Islamic studies at the University of Erfurt. He has been working as a research
fellow at the Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin and the Department for Near
Eastern Studies, University of Vienna. He is currently working on ‘Plurality
and Culture in Contemporary South Asia’ at the Centre for Islamic Theology,
University of Muenster. He has published Ozeanisches Gefühl der Unsterblichkeit
(2009) and Mission Medina: Da’wat-e Islami und Tablighi Jama’at (2011).

Contributor List ix
Aziz EL Kobaiti Idrissi is the current president of the International Academic
Center for Sufi and aesthetic Studies (IACSAS) in Fez. He is also professor of
arabic language and Sufi literature at the Moroccan Ministry of National
Education. His publications include Islamic Sufism in the West, (trans. Aisha
Bewley 2012), and several works in Arabic including Tasawwuf al-Islami fi
al-Wilayat al-Muttahidah al-Amrikiyah: Mazahir hudur al-Tasawwuf al-Maghribi
wa-ta’thiratuh (2013) and The Influence of Moroccan Sufism on American Modern
Poetry, (2013) (English/Arabic).
Lloyd Ridgeon is Reader in Islamic studies at the University of Glasgow. His
main area of research is medieval Persian Sufism, but he also engages in studies
of modern Iranian society and culture. In 2014 he was chosen to be the editor of
the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. His books include Jawanmardi: A
Sufi Code of Honour (2011), Morals and Mysticism in Persian Sufism: A History
of Futuwwat in Iran (2010), Sufi Castigator: Ahmad Kasravi and the Iranian Sufi
Tradition (2008), Persian Metaphysics and Mysticism (2002) and Aziz Nasafi
(1998). He has also edited a four-volume collection of essays in Routledgeʼs
Critical Concepts Series entitled Sufism (2008), and has edited a number of works
including Islamic Interpretations of Christianity (2011), Religion and Politics in
Modern Iran (2005), Iranian Intellectuals (1997–2007) (2008) and Shiʿ-i Islam
and Identity (2012). Most recently he has edited The Cambridge Companion to
Sufism (2015).
Mark Sedgwick is a professor of Arab and Islamic studies at Aarhus University
in Denmark. He is a historian by training, and previously taught for many
years at the American University in Cairo. His work focuses on modern and
transregional Islam and especially on Sufism and on Traditionalism. He also
works on terrorism and on Islamic modernism. His books include Muhammad
Abduh: A Biography (2009), Saints and Sons: The Making and Remaking of the
Rashidi Ahmadi Sufi Order, 1799–2000 (2005) and Against the Modern World:
Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century (2004).
His latest book is an edited collection: Making European Muslims: Religious
Socialization among Young Muslims in Scandinavia and Western Europe (2014).
Mauro Valdinoci received his PhD in anthropology from the Department of
Sciences of Language and Culture at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
in 2012. Having carried out fieldwork in Hyderabad, India, for several months in
2006 and in the period 2008–10, he wrote a dissertation which focuses on two

Contributor Listx
branches of the Qadiriyya Sufis in nineteenth-century Hyderabad, to discuss
the ways in which Indian Sufis have responded to modernization processes
and the growth of Islamic reformist movements. He is currently involved in the
preparation of his first monograph based on his dissertation. He has authored
articles in Archiv Orientalni, Oriente Moderno, Journal of Deccan Studies and
chapters in edited volumes. His research interests include anthropology of Islam,
Muslim cultures and societies in South Asia, Sufism, Islam and modernity,
Islamic reformism, transmission of knowledge, and ritual. During the academic
year 2013/14 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Oriental Institute of the Academy
of Sciences of the Czech Republic in Prague. He is currently an independent
researcher.
Itzchak Weismann is an associate professor of Islamic studies and until recently
director of the Jewish-Arab Center at Haifa University. His research interests
focus on the Salafiyya, Islamic movements in the Middle East and South Asia,
Sufism, modern Islamic thought and Interfaith dialogue. His books include Taste
of Modernity: Sufism, Salafiyya, and Arabism in Late Ottoman Damascus (2001);
The Naqshbandiyya: Orthodoxy and Activism in a Worldwide Sufi Tradition
(2007); Ottoman Reform and Islamic Regeneration (co-editor, 2005); Islamic
Myths and Memories: Mediators of Globalization (co-editor, 2014); and Islam:
Conversion, Sufism, Revival and Reform: Essays in Memory of Nehemia Levtzion
(co-editor, in Hebrew, 2012). He is the editor of the Sahar (Crescent) series of
translations of major Islamic texts.

Introduction
Lloyd Ridgeon
For nearly twenty years now students have been coming to me at Glasgow
University and asking how to approach essays or assignments. My response
is usually the same: ‘Look at the question, identify the key terms and attempt
to define and explain what they mean, and then address the specific question.’
Writing an introduction to the present volume, I have wondered how it would
be possible to provide something coherent and meaningful when the two key
terms, Sufism and Salafism, are so broad as to make definitions almost redundant.
Sufism is perhaps the most difficult of the terms to define, simply because it has
a history of over one thousand years, and perhaps inevitably, it has thrown up so
many manifestations that it is often difficult to witness a core that runs through
them all.
Elsewhere I have argued that it is not entirely accurate to define or call
Sufism ‘Islamic mysticism’, as not all who have followed the Sufi path have had
experiences that may be termed ‘mystical’.
1
It is perhaps more instructive to
regard Sufism as a form of intense piety and obedience to God or for others,
a form of yearning for God within the Islamic tradition that is epitomized by
the hadith of Gabriel in which Islam is divided into submission (islam ), faith
(iman) and excellence or doing what is beautiful (ihsan).
2
In other words, Sufism
is an orientation towards God that builds upon and excels in practice and faith.
Yet even in the early centuries of Sufi history there were elements of belief and
practice that aroused controversy on issues including the nature of Sufi claims
of ‘mystical’ experience. Was the Sufi God? Did the Sufi actually witness God?
Did the Sufi share God’s essence or attributes? There were also many questions
about the nature of Sufi rituals, including those involving intercession between
an aspiring Sufi and a guide (the shaykh, or pir), the visitation of tombs where
intercession could take place, and the ‘veneration’ of such individuals. These
issues were debated by the Sufis themselves, and treatises were written on all of
these topics, some in defence and others rejecting such beliefs and practices. The
Sufi tradition has accommodated a wide range of ideas and values; some Sufis
have embraced the speculative worldview of Ibn ʿArabi (d. 1240), which has been

Sufis and Salafis in the Contemporary Age2
termed by modern scholars ‘pantheist’, ‘monist’ and ‘theo-monist’: other Sufis,
such as Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111), have emphasized a form of Sufi ethics
that is personified by the hadith of Gabriel.
3
And there have been Sufis who have
rejected the imperialism associated with modern Western colonial power, and
have actively engaged in the performance of jihad. Yet despite some Sufis taking
up arms against Western powers, it is with the onset of the modern period,
when the Islamic world was challenged in scientific, political and military ways,
that Sufism faced its sternest challenges. Not only were the ‘superstitions’ and
‘backwardness’ of Sufis rejected by Westerners and Westernized Muslims, but also
the tradition was now opposed by a number of Muslims who have been termed
Salafis.
Salafism is derived from salaf, or more specifically the salaf al-salih who were
the Muslim community that succeeded Muhammad. Due to their historical
proximity to the Prophet, it is thought that the faith and practice of the al-salaf
al-salih was exemplary, and it is this that the modern Salafis seek to capture in
their own lives. Salafis attempt to recreate a ‘golden age’, and discover a pristine
version of Islam, stripped of all later accretions, including the four schools of
Sunni law, kalam (or systematic theology), fiqh (jurisprudence) and Sufism.
The emergence of Salafism coincided with both the emergence of colonial
Western powers in many regions of the Islamic world and a trend within the Sufi
movement for reform. These reforms between the eighteenth and the twentieth
centuries included a return to sacred scripture, a tightening of institutional
organization and jihad against the colonial power
4
; these three elements reflect
much of the modern Salafi enterprise, as Weismann states in the first chapter of
this book, ‘the Salafi discourse and popular socioreligious movements such as
the Muslim Brothers appear as modern transformations rather than negations
of Sufism’ (p. 9). Weismann also categorizes the development of what he calls
‘Islamic fundamentalism’ (i.e. Salafism) into three stages. The first stage emerged
in the later part of the nineteenth century, and includes the intellectuals
of the Ahl-i Hadith movement in India and the Arab Salafis. The latter are
of particular interest because in spite of their heterodox ideas they are often
regarded as forefathers of modern-day Salafism. For example, the Pan-Islamicist
Jamal al-Din Afghani (d. 1897) is famous in the West for his tract in response to
Ernst Renan (d. 1892), the celebrated French philosopher, in which he defended
the Arabs and Islam against the Aryan supremacy that was prevalent in much
of Europe. Significantly Afghani had little that was positive to say about Islam
as a religion: ‘In truth the Muslim religion has tried to stifle science and stop

Introduction 3
its progress.’
5
However, he has emerged as a Salafi hero largely on the basis of
his anti-imperialist perspective. Likewise, another early ‘Salafi’ was Muhammad
ʿAbduh (d. 1905), a disciple of Afghani, whose rationalist writings included
distinct Sufi and Mutazili sympathies (which are antithetical to modern Salafis).
6

Both Afghani and ʿAbduh are exemplars of what is known as ‘al-Salafiyya
al-tanwiriyya’, or enlightened Salafism. The second stage of Salafism emerged
after the First World War, and was championed by a student of ʿAbduh named
Rashid Rida (d. 1935), as well as by a number of similar-minded individuals across
the Islamic world, including Hassan al-Banna (d. 1949) in Egypt and Mawdudi
(d. 1979) in India.
7
Such Salafis favoured a far more literal understanding of
scripture rather than the allegorical readings of Afghani and ʿAbduh. The
resistance and hostility to Western imperialism and Western metanarratives
was one element that the new Salafis had in common with their forebears. The
third stage of Salafism emerged in the post-independence era after the end of the
Second World War. It is epitomized by the writings of the Egyptian Sayyid Qutb
(d. 1966), at least in his later, more radical phase.
8
However, to regard modern
Salafism as an endorsement of Qutb would be inaccurate, as modern Salafism
reveals great diversity, at least in how it responds to the changing contexts in
which it finds itself.
The common creed of the Salafis is based upon following the guidance found
in the Qurʾan and hadith, and while this is common for all Muslim groups, the
Salafis are distinct from more traditional Muslims in denying any validity to other
sources for knowledge. Thus the Sufi reliance on the knowledge derived from
shaykhs or pirs through intercession is rejected outright. Likewise, the exercise
of reason and interpretation of scripture is believed to be wrong, as Salafis hold
that there are self-evident truths to be found in the Qurʾan and hadith. One of
these truths is tawhid, or the unity of God who is supreme and entirely unique.
This view of God is perhaps best rendered by the Arabic term tanzih, that is to
say, God’s incomparability, which stands in contrast to the Sufi view of God,
which posits a deity that balances incomparability with closeness and similarity
(tashbih). In fact this similarity takes precedence over incomparability to the
extent that is best typified in the Persian expression ‘Hama ust’ (Everything is
He) and the Arabic ‘wahdat al-wujud ’ (unity of existence). These kinds of views
and expressions are viewed by Salafis as an innovation (bid‘a) of the original
message of tawhid, and are therefore rejected. The desire to act out an original
form of Islam that negates any ‘innovation’ reaches a point that Salafis deny the
legitimacy of any form of ‘excessive’ worship. Deviancy can ‘result from good

Sufis and Salafis in the Contemporary Age4
intentions. Muslims who pray more than the proscribed five times a day, for
example, are likely to be motivated by love for God. They are, however, still
engaged in innovation because they are inventing new practices to fulfil a human
desire.’
9
The emphasis on the Qurʾan and hadith, with the rejection of the larger
Islamic tradition, whether it is Sufi, or Mutazilite, or representative of the law
schools (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafiʿi and Hanbali) sets Salafism at odds with many
Muslims. However there are affinities between the Salafis and Wahhabis. The
difference between the two is that the Wahhabis have a close affinity with the
Hanbali school of law, and follow the rulings of major Hanbali scholars. This
stands at odds with the Salafis who reject following the teachings of scholars in
the centuries after the pious ancestors (al-salaf al-salih). Even so, Salafis respect
the views of Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1263), a famous Hanbali scholar who sought a
return to pristine Islam, and rejected the excesses of Sufism and was hostile to
the views of non-Muslims. The rejection of hundreds of years of tradition, along
with the same basic creed (aqida ) are the distinctive features of all Salafis.
Yet it should not be supposed that Salafis are the same everywhere, as there
exist a number of distinctive groups that oppose one another, especially on the
issue of how to respond to the challenges of the modern age. Wiktorowicz has
made a simple threefold classification of Salafis: purists, politicos and jihadis.
Individuals of the first group, the purists, are concerned primarily with the creed,
and educating Muslims about this, engaging in daʿwa and religious education.
The aim is to perfect religion, and until this is complete any political activity will
be doomed to failure. Purists consider that the present context facing Muslims is
analogous to the Meccan phase of Muhammad’s prophetic career, when he was
simply a warner and was not involved in the creation of an Islamic state, and so
purists hold that Muslims should imitate this model in the present context. It is
for this reason that purists such as Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani (d. 1999)
advised Palestinians to leave the occupied territories rather than fight within
the borders of Israel.
10
The second group, the politicos, gained strength from
the 1960s, when Saudi Arabia embraced a number of Muslim Brothers, fleeing
from Nasser’s Egypt. These Muslim Brothers argue that they were more aware
than the purists of the context of the times, and as a result they promoted a more
political agenda. While giving due attention to the Salafi creed, the politicos
became increasingly vocal following the invasion of Iraq by Saddam Hussein
and the arrival of American troops in the region in 1991. The third group is the
jihadis, who sanction violence in order to achieve its political agenda. It is this

Introduction 5
last group that has achieved notoriety in the West, and is associated with Osama
bin Laden, Abu Hamza (‘the Hook’)
11
and the Jordanian Abu Qatada who was
finally deported from the United Kingdom in July 2013.
Wiktorowicz’s categorization of Salafism within three groups has been further
refined by Thomas Hegghammer, who favours a fivefold explanation of Militant
Islamism, based upon their ‘rationale’, or mid-term political aims and strategy.
The five are groups that are state oriented, nation oriented, umma oriented,
morality oriented and sectarian.
12
This is not the place to explain any further
about the various ways to define Salafism, yet the attempts of Wiktorowic and
Hegghammer demonstrate that Salafism is indeed a complex phenomenon.
For our purposes, recent events have demonstrated that some Salafi groups
are actively hostile to forms of Sufism. In recent years there have been attacks
upon Sufi shrines (the perpetrators of which are often unknown – but many of
these violent acts have been attributed to Salafi-inspired groups or individuals).
13

Noorah al-Gailani opens Chapter 4 of the present volume with an account on
the bomb explosion at the shrine complex of ʿAbd al-Qadir Jilani in Baghdad in
2007. Since then Salafist groups have destroyed a number of mosques and shrines
associated with Sufism and ‘saint-veneration’: in 2014, groups of ISIS supporters
demolished some twenty establishments.
14
Similar events have occurred in a
number of regions within the Middle East, Africa and Asia. In Egypt, for example,
before the fall of Mubarak in 2011, Salafi inroads within Egypt had reached the
extent that in April 2010 the Ministry of Religious Endowments banned all Sufi
groups from holding gatherings for the performance of dhikr,
15
and ‘at least 25
Sufi shrines have been attacked or ransacked since the end of President Hosni
Mubarak’s regime’.
16
In Libya, Salafis were also responsible for the demolition of
the Sufi shrines of fifteenth-century scholar Abdel Salam al-Asmar in Zlitan
17

and of Shaab al-Dahmani in Tripoli in August 2012, resulting in the resignation
of the Interior Minister.
18
In Mali, the tomb of Sidi Mahmud Ben Amar (1463–
1548) was attacked on 5 May 2012, when the Salafist Ansar al-Din, who had
occupied Timbuktu, ‘prevented worshippers from approaching the tomb
before tearing off its doors, breaking windows and setting flammable portions
on fire’.
19
In Lahore in Pakistan, the shrine complex of Hujwiri, the famous
eleventh-century Sufi, was the target of suicide bombers in 2010, which killed
forty-two.
20
A similar attack occurred in the Sakhi Sarwar shrine in 2011 in the
Punjab, killing at least forty-one people.
21
It is not difficult to see a trend, and a
quick search on the internet provides numerous examples of such violence and
Salafi antipathy against Sufism. Salafi opposition to Sufism is also non-violent at

Sufis and Salafis in the Contemporary Age6
times, such as the recent serious suggestion offered by some Wahhabi scholars
in Saudi Arabia that the Prophet’s physical remains in the al-Masjid al-nabawi
in Medina be re-buried in a cemetery nearby.
22
It is not difficult to understand
this would upset many Sufis (among other Muslims) who believe in the efficacy
of visiting graves. Such violence against Sufism is most often neglected in the
Western media, and even in academic circles.
23
This is not surprising in light of
recent developments, such as the emergence of ISIS or ISIL, the shooting in a
Jewish museum in Brussels in May 2015 or the beheading of Western journalists
by members of this organization in 2014.
The present work attempts to address this lacuna by presenting ten articles
that highlight the various kinds of tensions that exist between Sufis and Salafis,
and indeed, within the problems that academics face when using terms such as
Sufi and Salafi. The articles are framed by articles that foreground this difficulty.
In the first chapter, Weismann shows how Sufism and Salafism are intimately
linked, in the respect that Salafism is a modern transformation of Sufism, while
in the last chapter Geaves demonstrates that Deobandi clerics in India (often
perceived as ‘Wahhabis’ or ‘Salafis’) consider themselves Sufis, and understand
the essence of the tradition as one of good intention and achieving the level
ihsan. While some Deobandis engage in traditional Sufi activities, such as the
dhikr, there does seem to be substantial difference with other Sufi(esque) groups
(such as the Barelvis), including the Deobandi rejection of excessive reliance on
intercession at the tombs of dead Sufis and ontological issues. The significance
of these two chapters lies in the fact that Sufism and Salafism should not be
regarded as antagonistic everywhere, at all times, on all issues. It would seem
that the key to understand the relationship between the two lies in the immediate
context, just as Thomas Hegghammer advised in relation to the differences in
Jihadi-Salafism.
Between these two chapters, a number of case studies from various locations
are presented that demonstrate the tensions between Salafism and Sufism.
Chapters 2 and 3 examine the cases of two prominent ‘Salafis’ from Egypt and
Turkey who promoted forms of Salafi thought just prior to the awakening of the
Western world to the Salafi phenomenon. The arguments of the ʿAbd al-Rahman
al-Wakil (1913–70), the Egyptian ‘Hammer of Deviations’, is regarded by the
Salafi group Ansar al-Sunna al-Muhammadiyya ‘to have done most to inflict
defeat upon the Sufis’ (Gauvain, p. 34) within the region. His criticisms of the
role of the Sufi Shaykh, excessive ritual practices among Sufis (which do not
reflect the ‘pristine’ version of Islam), and his criticisms of the ideas of Ibn ʿArabi

Introduction 7
are strikingly similar to the reasons that Ercümend Özkan (d. 1995) offered in
Turkey for the rejection of the Sufi tradition.
Sufi responses to the Salafi challenge have varied. In Chapter 4, Noorah
al-Gailani demonstrates how the Sufis have been careful not to antagonize the
Salafis in polemical language. Rather their attempt has been to legitimize Sufi
ritual practice (such as the dhikr, the celebration of the Prophet’s birthday and
visit to the saintʼs shrine) with reference to sacred scripture. Morocco has also
been subject to Salafi violence, and here the Sufi response has been interesting,
as is shown in Chapter 5. On the one hand, some Sufis have allied themselves
with the state in attempting to resist the new challenge, while other Sufi groups
have distanced themselves from the state and even adopted elements that are
more usually associated with Salafism. This is a trend that, as has already been
noted, has been manifested by Deobandis in India, thus making the dichotomy
between Salafism and Sufism problematic. Chapter 5 also demonstrates that
Salafism in Morocco is not homogenous, as there are differences between groups
that endorse the state and those that reject it.
In Chapter 6, attempts by four nation-states to use Sufism as a counter-balance
to Salafism is examined. Mark Sedgwick argues that as the rise of Salafism is
political, it is political answers that need to be provided. This helps to explain
why the attempt to appropriate Sufism in the West (in the United States and the
United Kingdom) has failed, and in Islamic regions (Morocco and Egypt) it has
been only partially successful. As Sedgwick observes, ‘Sufism may be the natural
enemy of Salafism, but this does not mean that Sufism is the natural ally of those
who are opposing Salafism, especially when they are opposing Salafism for their
own reasons’ (Sedgwick, p. 117).
The last four chapters of this book are devoted to Sufism in the Indian
subcontinent, and depict various manifestations of the tradition and how these
have responded to the Salafi challenge. In Chapter 7, Kashshaf Ghani outlines
the beliefs and practices of an ‘unorthodox’ group in Bengal, known as Fakirs,
who are associated with the Sufi tradition. Representatives of the more ‘orthodox’
variety of Sufism have had to defend the Fakirs from accusations of promoting
a non-shariʿa lifestyle (an accusation all too readily levelled by Salafis at Sufis),
and yet they have also given guarded warnings to Fakirs that their intentions in
pursuing such a path must be pure. In Chapter 8, another variety of Sufism is
depicted by Mauro Valdinoci, who examines the works of Hyderabadi Sufis, who
address Salafi criticisms without having recourse to vitriolic language or words
that would inflame relations between Sufis and Salafis. As Valdinoci observes,

Sufis and Salafis in the Contemporary Age8
this type of non-personalized argumentation differentiates the Hyderabadi Sufis
from Barelvi Sufis, who frequently identify specific individuals in their Sufi
responses to critics. Chapter 9 focuses upon the Barelvi movement, and serves
to highlight the main areas of belief and practice to which some Salafis object.
The last chapter problematizes the binary division between Sufism and Salafism,
and will force scholars to devise new paradigms by which it is possible to think
of the nature of contemporary Islam, and how (and indeed whether) Muslims
should be categorized with such labels.
I would like to thank the AHRC whose research networking programme
financed two conferences on the theme of contemporary Sufism. The research
from the first conference, held at Liverpool Hope University is included in the
Bloomsbury publication, Sufism in Britain, edited by Ron Geaves and Theodore
Gabriel. The research of the second conference, held at Glasgow University, is
contained herein.

1
Modernity from Within: Islamic
Fundamentalism and Sufism*
Itzchak Weismann
Islamic fundamentalism is a product of modernity. Its constitution as the
hegemonic discourse of modern Islam was accomplished in the course of the
twentieth century over against two Others: the external Other of the West and the
internal Other of tradition, especially its mystical aspect – Sufism. The article claims,
however, that the fundamentalists’ critique of Sufism as backward, superstitious and
apolitical involved the collective forgetting of the leading role that Sufi reformist
brotherhoods had filled in pre-modern Islam and in their own upbringing. In
this light, the Salafi discourse and popular socio-religious movements such as
the Muslim Brothers appear as modern transformations rather than negations
of Sufism. On the other hand, contemporary Sufism has constituted itself as the
modern Other of the hegemonic Islamic fundamentalism. The fundamentalist
estrangement from Sufism, and Islamic tradition at large, engendered a dialectics
of unenlightenment culminating in the present radicalization of Islam.
Entering the mosque you’ll see large masses and hear tumult and uproar. You’ll
see people who put chains and iron collars on their necks. Some of them naked
and some wear tatters and rags. Filth and dirt fill them. Their braided hair is so
stuck that water cannot wash it. Vermin graze in their bodies. …
Then they rise up to what they call dhikr, ‘as stricken with madness by Satan.’ Their
recollection is nothing but growling and mumbling, neighing and grumbling,
mixed with cries and faint noises, groans and sighs … women and men, old
and young, take part in all this. This is the party of the recollecting awliya – ‘the
friends of God.’
1
* This article was first published as “Modernity from within: Islamic Fundamentalism and Sufism,”
which appeared in Der Islam, vol. 86 (2011), pp. 142–170. The article is republished with permission
from De Gruyter.

Sufis and Salafis in the Contemporary Age10
Going back to and interpreting afresh the fundamentals of religion – the Qur’an,
the Prophet’s Sunna and the politico-religious model of the ancestors, al-salaf
al-salih or the imams – lies at the heart of Islamic intellectuals’ response of the past
century and a half to challenge modernity. The Sunni and Shiʿi ‘fundamentalist’
discourse of authentication has been accompanied by a critical re-evaluation of
the religious doctrines and practices of the intervening centuries, now lumped
together and essentialized under the newly constructed rubric of tradition.
Drawing on previous strands of opposition to mystical conceptions of Islam,
most forcefully articulated in the writings of the medieval theologians Ibn
Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, and uncompromisingly enacted by the
pre-modern Wahhabi movement, it was particularly ‘Sufism’ that came under fire.
Sufis are habitually denounced today as deviators from the true path of Islam,
held responsible for its so-called decline, and depicted as a major impediment to
its adaptation to the conditions and needs of the modern era.
The animosity shown by successive generations of Islamic fundamentalists
towards Sufism has long been noted and amply documented. In the past, scholars
who worked within the Orientalist paradigm understood such animosity in
linear terms, as part of the progressive, though never completed, substitution
of a modernizing Islam for backward superstitious beliefs and rituals that had
become obsolete.
2
More recent studies have demonstrated that reality is more
complex. It is now evident that in pre-modern times sharia-minded Sufism was a
major factor in the efforts at renewal and reform of Islam,
3
and that subsequently
Sufism itself has in many ways actively modernized itself.
4
Capitalizing on this ongoing research, and within the framework of the
general dismantling of the Orientalist paradigm, this chapter seeks to develop
a new model for analysing fundamentalist–Sufi relations.
5
I argue that Islamic
fundamentalism and contemporary Sufism have helped construct as well as
conceal each other as modern subjects, that along with the bitter polemics and
confrontations a measure of discursive and institutional continuities exists
between them, and that their mutual estrangement facilitates the present
radicalization within Islam. This dialectics of rejection and acceptance is in my
view an important key to understanding the inner evolution of modern Islam,
a corollary to its similarly dialectical attraction–repulsion attitude towards the
West.
My conceptualization of the complex interaction between Islamic
fundamentalism and Sufism in the modern era is threefold. First, there is a
need to define what the concept of Islamic fundamentalism actually refers

Modernity from Within: Islamic Fundamentalism and Sufism11
to. This will serve as the point of departure for exploring the fundamentalist
critique of Sufism. In the second part of this chapter I ground the discussion in
a general theory of modernity. This entails, on the one hand, a deconstruction
of the prevailing notion of ‘the Sufi tradition’, and on the other hand, a review of
the conditions that led to its substitution by Islamic fundamentalism. The last
part of the chapter is an analysis of the dialectical relationships characterizing
the modern Sufi–fundamentalist interaction. Here I excavate the Sufi roots of
Islamic fundamentalism, identify paradigmatic moments in the separation of
the two trends, uncover the fundamentalists’ collective forgetting of the Sufi
legacy, and last but not least, explore the Sufis own strategies of modernization.
The interactive relationship between Islamic fundamentalism and Sufism
is tested against some of the major religious intellectuals and movements on
both sides of their dividing line. Focusing geographically on the Middle East
and South Asia, two of the major centres of Islamic reform in the modern
era, I examine in the fundamentalist side the Ahl- and Salafi trends, the
Muslim Brothers and Jamaʿat-i Islami movements and some Jihadi groups. On
the Sufi side my examples are mostly taken from the Naqshbandiyya, arguably
the most orthodox and activist Sufi brotherhood in Islamic history.
6
Part 1: The fundamentalist phenomenon
A new trend
The concept of Islamic fundamentalism has recently come under increasing
criticism owing to its Western Christian origins and because of the negative
connotations it acquired in the mass media and public opinion. There is also
much confusion as to the nature of the phenomenon, the temporal and spatial
territories it covers, and which of the multitude of religious thinkers and
movements should actually be included in it. Is Islam essentially fundamentalist,
as some diehard Orientalists and zealot Islamists would imply?
7
Or shall we
restrict the application of fundamentalism, as many tend to do, to the present
militant wave of Islamic resurgence, the followers of Qutb, Khomeini and
Osama b. Ladin?
8
In between, to what juncture in the trajectory of contemporary
Islam shall we trace the beginnings of Islamic fundamentalism: the eighteenth-
century ultra-orthodox Wahhabiyya?
9
The late-nineteenth-century Modernism
of Afghani and ʿAbduh?
10
The post-First World War Salafi trend of Rida?
11
Or

Sufis and Salafis in the Contemporary Age12
perhaps the mass politico-religious movement of the Muslim Brothers of the
1930s and 1940s?
12
Such criticisms notwithstanding, the concept of Islamic fundamentalism
seems to be useful as a comparative device and, more importantly for our
context, it evokes the literal meaning of the phenomenon at hand. A notable
example of the advantages as well as hazards of the latter approach is provided
by Euben. According to her, ‘Fundamentalism refers to contemporary religio-
political movements that attempt to return to the scriptural foundations of the
community, excavating and reinterpreting these foundations for application
to the contemporary social and political world.’ She further clarifies that her
definition is meant to emphasize fundamentalism’s political nature, limit its
application to scriptural religious traditions and characterize it as a modern
response to modernity.
13
Yet Euben’s definition suffers from serious lacuna. It overlooks the long
period, eventually the greater part of Islamic history, that passed between the
contemporary modern world and the era of the scriptural foundations of Islam.
This neglect, which is largely due to her focus on the external relationship
between Islamic fundamentalism and modern Western rationalism, leads her
to uncritically accept the basically fundamentalist ideology that depicts Sufism,
and latter-day Islam in general, as its non-political ‘other-worldly’ antithesis. It
is precisely this dichotomous view that the present chapter seeks to challenge. I
argue that Sufism has always had a political ‘this-worldly’ dimension, and that
any understanding of Islamic fundamentalism must take into account its inner
relationship with Sufism and the Muslim tradition at large.
My working definition is accordingly as follows: ‘Islamic fundamentalism’
refers to the contemporary religio-political discourse of return to the scriptural
foundations of the religion as developed by Muslim scholars, mystics and,
increasingly, lay persons and movements, which reinterpret these foundations
on the basis of their living traditions for application to the socio-political and
cultural realities of the modern world. This definition shows that fundamentalism
has become the hegemonic religious discourse in the contemporary Muslim
world, shared by practically all elements in the Islamic arena. After all, few
Muslims would deny either the obligation to adhere to the scriptures or the need
to adjust to modern realities. ‘Fundamentalism’ in this respect is the Islamic form
of modernity.
This definition also helps us fix the temporal trajectory of Islamic
fundamentalism, which on the basis of socio-religious criteria may be divided

Modernity from Within: Islamic Fundamentalism and Sufism13
into three to four phases. The first, which by reference to nationalist theory I
call proto-fundamentalism, emerged in the later part of the nineteenth century,
in the wake of the consolidation of the Western colonialist onslaught. Its main
representatives were the ‘ulama’-cum-religious intellectuals of the Ahl-i Hadith
movement in India
14
and of the Arab Salafi trend.
15
These were divided into
reformists, who kept to scriptural religious discourse, and modernists, who were
ready to adopt outright Western ideas and institutions.
16
Rashid Rida, who is habitually described as the founder of the Salafiyya,
actually marks its transition to the second phase of Islamic fundamentalism. His
principal contributions to the fundamentalist cause were the religious journal
he founded and edited for thirty-five years and the innovative political ideal of
the Islamic state he formulated in the aftermath of the First World War and the
abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate.
17
The major fundamentalist factor from
the interwar period on, however, was the popular movements of the Muslim
Brothers in the Middle East and Jamaʿat-i Islami in South Asia. The Brothers
incorporated the Salafi message into their more comprehensive self-definition,
18

while the Jamaʿat envisioned an all-out battle against both Western influence
and traditional culture.
19
The combination of religion and politics offered by
these movements forms the backbone of Islamic fundamentalism in its stricter
sense.
The next phase refers to the post-independence era, during which Islamic
fundamentalists were often persecuted by authoritarian regimes and as a result
were partly radicalized. The radical new teaching is epitomized in Sayyid Qutb’s
concept of the return of the jahiliyya (pre-Islamic barbarity).
20
Under his spell a
wealth of vanguard groups sprang up which turned to violence and terror in their
struggle against ‘unbelieving’ regimes.
21
In Iran, the radical Shiʿa combination of
Imam Khomeini’s novel doctrine of wilayat-i faqih (rule of the jurist) and ʿAli
Shariʿati’s modernist social reinterpretation of the Qur’an underlie the Islamic
revolution.
22
Today scholars usually apply the term fundamentalism to these
militant vanguards, though it is more accurate to describe them as its radical
offshoots. Osama b. Ladin and Al-Qaʾida belong to an incipient fourth phase of
Salafi-jihadism, which since the turn of the twenty-first century strives to move
the battle against infidelity to the global arena.
23
Finally, a word is due on the Arabian Wahhabiyya. As a pre-modern
phenomenon, the original movement of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab should not be
counted as part of Islamic fundamentalism as here defined. Still, one cannot
overlook the considerable influence the Wahhabi doctrine has exerted on the

Sufis and Salafis in the Contemporary Age14
formation and evolution of the fundamentalists. The Wahhabis were rehabilitated
as true believers by the leaders of the present Saudi state.
24
In the heyday of
Arab authoritarianism, the Saudis gave shelter to persecuted Muslim Brothers in
the common struggle against unbelief, and subsequently, as the term Wahhabi
itself became contested, both the Wahhabi establishment and the sahwa (Islamic
awakening) opposition laid claim to the title of Salafi-Wahhabism.
25
Against the Sufis
Islamic fundamentalism’s attitude towards Sufism reflects the existential gap it
imagines between the divine origins of the religion and its latter-day degeneration.
Opposition to Sufism has been a constant feature of the Islamic arena almost
from the beginning. Various strands throughout Islamic history – the rationalist
Muʾtazila, traditionalist Hanbalits, the puritan Almohad, Kadizadeli and Wahhabi
movements, jurists, and occasionally rulers – contested one or another of the
Sufi spiritual beliefs, rituals and organizations.
26
Their censure could at times be
harsher than any shown by their modern counterparts. Still, past challenges to the
mystical aspect of Islam were usually confined to movements on the fringes of
the Islamic consensus or related to particular historical circumstances. With the
rise of the modern fundamentalist trend they moved to centre stage. The present
challenge is unprecedented in both its scope and duration. Emanating from
the hegemonic religious discourse of modern Islam, it threatens to marginalize
Sufism as such.
27
Fundamentalists of practically all phases and shades have shared an aversion
to the prevailing forms of Sufism, though they differ as to the extent to which
Sufism as such should be condemned. While some are willing to reject it in
toto, most others make a distinction between ‘true’ Sufism, which abides by the
scriptures and the model of the ancestors, and ‘false’ Sufism, which is replete with
unlawful innovations. The latter further disagree as to where exactly the fault line
should be drawn: the early ascetic recluses, the speculative mystics culminating in
Ibn ʿArabi, the mythic founders of the Sufi brotherhoods, or perhaps their unruly
followers? Rather than a mere linear ascent, it is affinity to either the Wahhabi
ultra-orthodoxy or Jihadi-Salafi radicalism that has determined the measure of
animosity shown towards Sufism by each fundamentalist thinker or group.
Let us explore some principal expressions of the anti-Sufi feelings as they
appear in the literature. My survey is consciously biased towards the ‘big men’, the

Modernity from Within: Islamic Fundamentalism and Sufism15
founders of the various fundamentalist trends and movements, those who set the
tone for others to follow. Aversion to popular practices associated with Sufism
was apparent from the very beginning of Islamic fundamentalism. The Indian
Ahl-i Hadith trend, though denying any Wahhabi influence, shared its general
orientation. Siddiq Hasan Khan and others of its leaders claimed to respect the
great saints, but were utterly opposed to the popular celebrations in the shrines
and prohibited pilgrimage even to the Prophet’s tomb in Medina. They generally
discouraged the institutional forms of Sufism, rejected speculations about God’s
existence and relegated Sufism to the realm of the private.
28
In the Arab world the Salafi attitude to Sufism was generally more tolerant.
29

The trend was set in Baghdad, where Nuʾman al-Alusi enlisted the authority of
Ibn Taymiyya to condemn popular Sufi practices associated with tomb visits
and making saints intermediaries (wasila) between man and God. Alusi pointed
out, however, that the celebrated theologian did not condemn Sufism as such
but only beliefs and practices that contravened the Qur’an and the Sunna.
30

ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi of Aleppo featured one of the participants in
the imaginary Islamic conference he convenes in Mecca as a Naqshbandi Sufi
master. Stirred by the criticism that his colleagues direct against the Sufi rituals,
al-Shaykh al-Sindhi vows to abandon his tariqa (the Sufi way and by extension
brotherhood). Another participant, the Najdi scholar, a thin disguise for the
Wahhabis, lashes out against ‘people who hang on the walls of their houses
and even their mosques tablets naming their venerated one, which resemble
the tablets for icons among Christians and idolaters, and invoke them for
blessing, remembrance, and supplication’.
31
Kawakibi suggests imposing on each
brotherhood a special social task in place of their current practices – taking care
of orphans, assisting the poor, calling people to prayer or combating intoxicating
drinks.
32
For the contemporary Islamic modernists, who were ready to adopt Western
rationalist-scientific criteria, the question of miracles occupied centre stage. For
Sayyid Ahmad Khan, leader of the trend in India, acceptance of the Western
point of view was so complete that Sufism became almost irrelevant. The law of
nature left no room for miracles (karamat ), and those mentioned in the Qur’an
(muʾjizat) were actually dreams.
33
His Egyptian counterpart Muhammad
ʿAbduh, who retained his love for ‘true’ Sufism, was more circumspect. Rather
than total denial of miracles, he left them to the discretion of the believer:
It must be noted that Sunnis and others are agreed that it is not necessary to
believe in the occurrence of any particular miracle (karama ) at the hand of any

Sufis and Salafis in the Contemporary Age16
particular saint after the emergence of Islam. So, according to the consensus of
the community (ijma ), any Muslim may deny the occurrence of any miracle at
all and, by denying it, he will not be acting contrary to any principles of the faith
or deviating from a sound sunna or departing from the straight path.
34
Similar censures against tomb visits, popular practices, brotherhoods, miracles and
mystical speculations intersperse the work of Rashid Rida. Gradually, however,
as Hourani’s masterful analysis demonstrates, Rida’s critique of Sufism seemed
to exceed that of his fellow Salafis. He called into question the advanced stages of
the spiritual path beyond trust in God (tawakkul ); rejected the necessity of the
relationship between the spiritual guide (murshid ) and his disciple (murid ), as
well as one of the chain of transmission (silsila ) on which it is built; and last but
not least, pointed to the political damage caused by the quietism and divisiveness
that the Sufi teachings and organization encouraged.
35
It was particularly the latter politically oriented criticism that the Society
of Muslim Brothers was designed to address. Mitchell in his seminal work
demonstrates that Hasan al-Banna, more than any of his Salafi predecessors,
accepted the dhikr (the rite of God’s recollection), asceticism and the mystical
perception of God as part of ‘the core and essence of Islam’. He claimed, however,
that from the second century on Sufism was harmed by foreign teachings
and philosophies that sowed corruption and factionalism in the ranks of the
community. Banna’s followers in Egypt, Syria and elsewhere blamed the Sufi
shaykhs for encouraging innovations, superstitions, saint worship and witchcraft,
and for unscrupulously ‘drugging the masses’ and leading them to withdraw
from life and resign themselves to their fate.
36
The South Asian Jamaʿat-i Islami followed a somewhat reverse trajectory. Abu
Aʿla al-Mawdudi’s initial judgement of Sufism was extremely harsh. He held it
accountable for the decline of Islam throughout history, and ultimately for the
failure of the Mughal Emperors to convert India to Islam. However, under the
pressure of rival ʿUlamaʾ groupings and the general public in Pakistan, Mawdudi
was forced to retreat. Still averse to popular rituals and festivals in the Chishti
and Qadiri shrines, he now professed to accept Sufism as moral truth.
37
The
attitude to Sufism of his Indian counterpart, Abu ʾl-Hasan ʿAli al-Nadwi, was
more genuine. Nadwi, the head of Nadwat al-ʿUlama ʾ in Lucknow, subscribed
to the Muslim Brothers’ and Jamaʿat-i Islami’s condemnation of the speculative
mysticism of Ibn ‘Arabi, and of the whole gamut of popular Sufi practices.
38
But
he never tired of reminding his readers of the central role played by Sufis in
the conversion of South Asia to Islam and in the battle against Islam’s enemies
worldwide.
39

Modernity from Within: Islamic Fundamentalism and Sufism17
Sayyid Qutb, the martyred prophet of Sunni radical fundamentalism, bore
clear mystical inclinations. In his quest to contact his Lord and devote himself
totally to Him, in the true meaning of the term servitude (ubudiyya ), Qutb
highlighted the love between man and God, claimed to follow ‘God’s friends’
in abandoning worldly pleasures and discerned an essential harmony between
the soul and the universe. This, however, had nothing to do with the historical
manifestations of Sufism or with the varied Sufi techniques to attain the goal,
which he practically ignored.
40
Few members in the proliferation of local and global militant groupings that
set out to realize Qutb’s radical teachings possess such an authentic inner life.
These are usually concerned with more practical matters. Abdallah Azzam, the
spiritual mentor of Osama b. Ladin in Afghanistan and a major figure in the
development of contemporary global Jihad, attacked the Sufi brotherhoods for
devoting themselves to al-Jihad al-Akbar, the struggle against the soul, at the
expense of al-Jihad al-Ashgar, the actual fighting against infidels. For him there
was only one kind of Jihad, which is incumbent on each and every Muslim.
41

Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, one of the most articulate ideologues of the Jihadi-
Salafi trend living today,
42
displays in this matter a clear Wahhabi disposition.
He defines the calling for saints’ help and circumambulating their tombs as the
greatest shirk (breach of God’s unity), which excludes their perpetrators from
the fold of Islam. The controversial Ahbash brotherhood of Lebanon represents
in his eyes infidelity for both worshipping dead saints and collaborating with
unbelieving regimes.
43
Shiʿi fundamentalist attitudes towards Sufism have
not been much different from those of their Sunni counterparts. As Knysh
has demonstrated, Khomeini subscribed to the Iranian tradition of Islamic
esotericism (‘irfan ) and kept a lifelong interest in the teachings of Ibn ʿArabi.
Even when he became preoccupied with political activity he continued to
insist that to be Islamically valid and effective, politics must always be joined to
moral purification and spiritual advancement.
44
ʿAli Shariʿati, not unlike Qutb,
recognized the need for spirituality in the modern world and acknowledged Jalal
al-Din Rumi as a great mystic poet, Mulla Sadra as an authentic philosopher of
ʿirfan and amir ʿAbd al-Qadir al-Jazaʾiri as a spiritual mujtahid. This, however,
did not prevent them from displaying the usual fundamentalist aversion to
contemporary forms of Sufism. For Shari’ati, Sufism was associated with the
obscurantist religion of the clerics and with the failure to act responsibly in
the world.
45
Khomeini’s government demanded the allegiance of the already-
weakened Sufi brotherhoods after the Islamic revolution and did not hesitate to
clamp down on the recalcitrant.
46

Sufis and Salafis in the Contemporary Age18
Part 2: Islam and modernity
The pre-modern legacy
The fundamentalist attack on Sufism has aimed at current beliefs and rituals that
seem to contravene God’s unity as understood and practised by the Prophet and
the ancestors, and on the other hand to be inadequate for the realities of the modern
age. The main targets have been the veneration of Sufi masters, unscriptural popular
practices at saints’ tombs and unwarranted metaphysical speculations. Already for
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab and his followers, such censures became part of a general
moral attack against the religious status quo prevailing in the Islamic societies of
the day.
47
Fundamentalists went a step further by reconstructing latter-day Sufism
as part of a rigid reactionary tradition that needed to be superseded by a modern
concept of religiosity. Thereby they also magnified their own contribution, as
new religious intellectuals, to the modern renaissance of Islam. Only gradually, as
part of the general dismantling of the Orientalist–fundamentalist paradigm, have
historians begun to realize that along with the Hanbali-Wahhabi legacy, Islamic
fundamentalism has roots in the Sufi tradition too.
The lasting vitality of the Sufi aspect of Islam in the pre-modern era is
widely recognized today. Many a scholar moreover observes a revival on the
brotherhoods’ activity in the ‘long eighteenth century’. Voll scrutinized the
contemporary biographical dictionaries to map out the Islam-wide web of
revivalist movements of the time, thereby demonstrating that the Wahhabi
anti-Sufi position was the exception rather than the rule, and that most other
movements were actually Sufi.
48
The Sufi-dominated renewal and reform was a
two-pronged project: inner critique of ‘unlawful’ Sufi beliefs and rituals, which
continued to prevail in most places and settings; and increased involvement in
the affairs of society and state. Far from being an integral project, the plethora
of individuals and movements that took part in this far-ranging movement
differed widely as to the Islamic resources to be employed to generate the desired
reforms and the ways in which they might be realized. Nevertheless, three partly
overlapping prototypical methods of Sufi reform can be observed in them, each
accentuating a particular tenet of the tradition in anticipation of some important
aspect in the politico-religious programme of modern fundamentalism.
One prototype, represented by the towering figures of the Indian Shah
Waliullah (1702–62) and the Moroccan itinerant Ahmad ibn Idris (1750–1837),
was a return to the scriptures. The two Sufi scholars combined an unequivocal

Modernity from Within: Islamic Fundamentalism and Sufism19
commitment to Sufism in general and the teachings of Ibn ʿArabi in particular,
with direct reliance on the Qur’an and Sunna, opposition to the prevalent practice
of blind imitation of previous authorities (taqlid ) and support of consultation of
the original sources (ijtihad). These exoteric teachings made Shah Waliullah, the
muhaddith of Delhi, defend Ibn Taymiyya,
49
while Ibn Idris earned the respect
of the ferocious Wahhabis under whose rule he thrived in Mecca.
50
Walliullah’s
legacy was later appropriated by most reform trends in modern South Asia,
while Ibn Idris’ disciples founded the Sanusi and Mirghani Sufi brotherhoods
that engaged in spreading Islam on the periphery, in the Arabian and Sahara
deserts and in the Sudan.
51
Another prototypical reform method, embodied particularly in shariʿa-
minded brotherhoods such as the Khalwatiyya, Shadhiliyya and Naqshbandiyya,
involved a reorganization of the tariqa framework. These brotherhoods employed
various mystical means to consolidate and expand their structures, along with
the demand to subject Sufism to the precepts of the shariʿa. Mustafa al-Bakri
(1688–1749) and his deputies, who spread the Khalwatiyya in Egypt and North
Africa, popularized their brotherhood through exclusive affiliation and mass
dhikr ceremonies.
52
Ahmad al-Arabi al-Darqawi (1760–1823) revived the
tradition of wandering mendicants to renew and spread the Shadhiliyya from
Morocco.
53
Shaykh Khalid (1776–1827), whose offshoot of the Naqshbandiyya
spread widely among Turks and Kurds, concentrated authority in his hands
through innovative use of the mystical practices of rabita (binding the heart to
the image of the master) and khalwa (seclusion).
54
These reform methods were paralleled in the Shi’a case by the Akhbari and
Shaykhi schools. Muhammad al-Astarabadi (d. 1624) and Muhsin al-Fayd
al-Kashani (d. 1680), leaders of the Akhbariyya, combined adherence to the
mystical philosophy of Mulla Sadra with a renewed stress on the hadith of the
Imams as the source for infallible guidance to the community. Although losing
out to the rival Usuli school, which claimed the authority of each generation to
form its own ijtihad, their call to return to the pristine community had a decisive
influence on the future course of Shiʿi reformist thought.
55
Ahmad Ahsaʾi (1753–
1826), the founder of the Shaykhiyya, propagated its teaching among the political
and religious elites in Qajar Iran as one of the perfect Shiʿa, the elect who are
spiritually initiated by the Imams, and like them possess infallible knowledge.
The persecution of the Shaykhis by the religious establishment paved the way for
the arrival of the more radical dissent movements of the Babis and Bahaʾi’s, who
ultimately left the pale of Islam.
56

Sufis and Salafis in the Contemporary Age20
The strengthening of the tariqa structures was designed to allow Sufi
brotherhoods to cope with the social and political degeneration that affected
most Muslim politics of the eighteenth century.
57
The various offshoots of the
North African Khalwatiyya sought to cater to the needs of the urban classes
and the masses alike in the face of oppressive Mamluk regimes, the Shadhiliyya
was implicated in revolts against the Mulay of Morocco and the Deys of Algeria.
Most important in the political sphere was undoubtedly the Naqshbandiyya,
which focused its efforts on the centres of the Muslim world. Its leaders in Delhi
sought to fortify the Muslim community in the fact of the rapid disintegration
of the Mughal Empire, while in Istanbul at the beginning of the nineteenth
century deputies of Shaykh Khalid supported the Ottoman sultan’s quest to set
the empire on the path of modernization.
A third prototype of reform, Jihad against non-Muslims, gained particular
force later in the nineteenth century, following the onslaught of European
colonialism. Sufi brotherhoods provided the matrix as well as the leadership for
resistance to foreign rule where the state failed to do so or was completely absent.
In British India, the Jihad declared by Ahmad Barelvi in the 1820s against the
Sikhs was defined as tariqa muhammadiyya (way of the Prophet), a brotherhood
that combined and transcended the existing ones. It was designed to carve out
a territory for a new Muslim state.
58
In Algeria a decade later, resistance to the
French occupation was conducted by ʿAbd al-Qadir al-Jazaʾiri on the basis of his
family branch of the Qadiriyya and some local offshoots of the Khalwatiyya. The
independent state he led for fifteen years in the interior of the country strictly
enforced the shariʿa.
59
At that time Imam Shamil mobilized the mountaineers for
a thirty-year struggle against the Russian encroachment to the north Caucasus
through the activist orthodox principles of the Naqshbandiyya-Khalidiyya.
60

In the early twentieth century, the struggle against the Italian invasion of Libya
was undertaken by the Sanusiyya after the Ottoman withdrawal. Its head was
subsequently crowned king of independent Libya.
61
As European political and cultural influence in the Muslim world waxed, the
militant drive of such Sufi reformist brotherhoods could at times turn against
their own Westernized Muslim governments. Muhammad Ahmad, who in 1881
proclaimed himself the Mahdi and drove the Egyptians out of Sudan, was an
adept of a local offshoot of the Khalwatiyya. His messianic pretensions entailed
the abolition of all Sufi brotherhoods, as well as the four schools of Law.
62
Shaykh
Said of Palu, leader of the shattered Kurdish uprising against the fledgling secular
Turkish government of Ankara in 1925, belonged to the Khalidi branch of the

Modernity from Within: Islamic Fundamentalism and Sufism21
Naqshbandiyya. This revolt involved a mixture of Orthodox Islam and Kurdish
Nationalism.
63
The modern conditioning
Western modernity was imposed on the Muslim world in the course of the
nineteenth century by colonial domination. The forced awareness to the alien
conqueror’s look resulted in the objectification of the Islamic self as against
two Others – the external Other of the modern West and the internal Other of
‘traditional religion’ and especially its mystical aspect. The Islamic fundamentalist
ideological project has accordingly been conducted along two complementary
lines. One is to ‘prove’ the compatibility of Islam and modernity through the
appropriation and reinterpretation of the legacy of the Prophet and the ancestors
in the light of present realities; the other is to ‘expose’ those responsible for Islam’s
failure to modernize, which amounts to scapegoating Sufism as the cause of
Muslims’ deviations and decline. Sufis who allow pre-modern reformist trends
readily share the fundamentalist quest for modernity, but are adamant to frame
it within their own mystical traditions.
The colonial and post-colonial impact of the West has been exercised
through political control, capitalistic enterprise and the media. Fundamentlists
enthusiastically joined the nationalist struggle against Western imperialism
between the two and are today the most vociferous opponents of its
cultural invasion. Still, they not only approve the instrumental use of advanced
technology produced in the West, but also often incorporate into their discourse
elements of its rational-scientific worldview and the ideals of liberty and progress.
Hence their apologetic endeavours to provide ‘proofs’ of the existence and unity
of God
64
and their resorts to ijtihad, now reinterpreted as individual reasoning.
65

In this light the Sufis have been portrayed as speculators, miracle mongering,
superstitious and backward.
Internally, the unfinished project of Islamic modernity has been played out
at the interface between two major, though unequal, socio-political and cultural
processes. The dominant one was the emergence of the centralized bureaucratic
state, which through the idiom of development purported to catch up with the
West. Islamic fundamentalists were among the first as well as most persistent in
denouncing the authoritarian inclinations that have characterized most Muslim
regimes in the past century and a half.
66
On the other hand, while never renouncing

Sufis and Salafis in the Contemporary Age22
the caliphate as such, they defined a new political goal in the establishment of an
Islamic state,
67
in which control would be subjected to the precepts of the shariʿa.
From here comes the re-imagining of the Prophet as a successful statesman and
the reconstruction of al-salaf al-silah – the pious ancestors – in the Sunni case,
68

and of Imam Husayn’s martyrdom in the Shiʿa case,
69
as the respective models
for the propagation of Islam and their unflinching dedication to its case. Sufis, by
contrast, have come to represent in the eyes of the fundamentalists submissive
cooperation with foreign colonial governments or indigenous iniquitous rulers.
The other internal process of modernization, the formation of a vibrant and
free public sphere, which played such a prominent role in the constitutions of
Western civil society and democracy, it still an ideal to be realized in most of
the Muslim world. The fundamentalists are usually no less authoritarian and
accord the last say in the Islamic state to the men of religion: the Supreme Leader
and the Council of Guardians in the Iranian case,
70
the amirs among the Sunni
socio-religious movements.
71
Concomitantly they express commitment to the
shura – consultation between rulers and ruled, which is increasingly understood
in terms of parliaments, elections and the political participation of the masses.
72

Islamic fundamentalists have also never hesitated to make ample use of the mass
media – from the printing press to the internet – to advance their ideologies
on the national and global public arenas both as opposition movements and
in cases when they have taken the helm.
73
From this perspective it seems only
natural that popular saint worship and the unconditional surrender demanded
of disciples to their master in the Sufi brotherhoods would come under fire.
Part 3: Dialectics of unenlightenment
Roots of fundamentalism
Islamic fundamentalisms ‘othering’ of Sufism, and tradition religion in general,
was instrumental in the constitution of its own Self as a modern subject. Presenting
‘Sufism’ as irrational, apolitical and submissive allowed the fundamentalists to
introduce in its stead a rationalist form of ijtihad, the ideal of an Islamic state, and
the principles of social justice and participation. This dichotomous construction
necessitated concealing the Sufi roots of Islamic fundamentalism in general, and
the ability of the pre-modern reformist tradition to modernize in particular,
on the other hand, the subjection to Islamic fundamentalism’s view compelled

Modernity from Within: Islamic Fundamentalism and Sufism23
contemporary Sufism to constitute its Self as the modern Islamic Other. The
fundamentalists’ animosity prevented the Sufis from recognizing it as its own
progeny and from acknowledging its self-assumed role as the representative
of modern Islam. Modernization has thus resulted in the splitting of Islam
between two mutually hostile camps, whereas the progressive abandonment of
the moderating force of shariʿa-bound Sufism paved the way for the drift of the
fundamentalists’ radical wing to terror and violence.
Their increasingly emphatic denials notwithstanding, Islamic fundamentalists
were habitually brought up on the pre-modern Sufi reformist tradition. Among
the first-phase Indian reformers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century, Ahmad Khan spent his early life in the major Naqshbandi khanaqah
(Sufi hospice) of Delhi,
74
and many Ahl-i Hadith leaders, as already noted,
likewise claimed a Naqshbandi affiliation. Their Salafi counterparts in the Arab
provinces of the Ottoman Empire – the Alusis of Baghdad
75
and their comrades
in the various Syrian cities – came from families associated with Shaykh Khalid
and his Naqshbandi offshoot. Those in Damascus subsequently formed the closed
circle of ʿAbd al-Qadir al-Jazaʾ iri, who following defeat made the city his home
and promoted an experiential adaptation of Ibn ʿArabi’s teaching to modern
realities.
76
ʿAbduh was drawn to religious studies by an uncle who was affiliated to
a Darqawi branch of the Shadhiliyya, and later on transferred his allegiance to his
new master, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani.
77
Rida too was attracted to a Naqshbandi
master in his youth in Tripoli, Lebanon, before his move to Egypt.
Second-phase fundamentalists of the interwar period showed a similar
debt to Sufism. Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brothers, was active in his
youth in the Hasafuyya brotherhood, another offshoot of the Shadhiliyya. He
enthusiastically joined its work to uphold Islamic morality against Christian
missionary.
78
Mawdudi, his counterpart at the head of Jamaʿat-i Islami, was
born into a family that traced its origins to the Chishtiyya, the earliest and
most widespread brotherhood in the subcontinent. He was much influenced by
the mystical piety of his father, but then opted for a career of journalism and
politics.
79
Nadwi came from a family that was affiliated with the Naqshbandiyya
and was especially attached to Ahmed Barelvi’s legacy; he actively followed the
path under two Naqshbandi masters, and had no difficulty combining Sufism
with collaboration with the Wahhabis and the Muslim Brothers.
80
Only with the third phase of radical Islamists was the fundamentalist–
Sufi connection practically severed. Recruited largely from the science and
engineering faculties at secular universities, leaders of the contemporary Islamic

Sufis and Salafis in the Contemporary Age24
revival have had little opportunity to become acquainted with Sufism or, for that
matter, with the learned Islamic tradition at large. Before joining the Islamist
camp, Qutb was a literary critic and an employee in the Egyptian Ministry of
Education
81
; ʿAzzam specialized in agriculture in a West Bank college
82
; Maqdisi
enrolled in the University of Mosul.
83
Reports differ about Osama b. Ladin,
who grew up as a pious Wahhabi but then graduated from an elite school in
Beirut in either economics or business administration, or civil engineering.
84

Khomeini’s education was of course religious, but Shari’ati earned his master’s
degree in foreign languages from the University of Mashhad, and then pursued
his doctorate in sociology and Islamic studies in Paris.
85
Moments of transformation
The phases of the discursive transition from Sufi reformist praxis to the Islamic
fundamentalist ideology have been determined by the changing socio-political
and cultural configuration of the three engines of modernization: Western
penetration, state consolidation and the struggle for a public sphere. The period
up to the First World War was dominated by the direct and indirect control of
the Western powers, countered by Sultan Abdulhamid II’s (1876–1909) Pan-
Islamic policy, as well as by the introduction of print culture and the emergence
of a new class of lay intellectuals. The interwar period saw the climax of colonial
domination, along with the formation of nationalist movements of liberation and
a vibrant public debate. In the post-independence era indigenous governments
adopted Western-inspired modernization projects while subjecting public
spheres to their authoritarian rule. Their hold over society has hardly begun to
weaken with the onset of globalization.
To illustrate the intricate dialectics involved in the modern transformation
of Islam I focus on three emblematic moments, each epitomizing one stage in
the evolution of fundamentalist–Sufi relations. The first is a question addressed
in 1881 by Nu’man al-Alusi, the Iraqi founder of the modern Salafiyya, to Siddiq
Hasan Khan, his counterpart in the Indian Ahl-i Hadith, concerning the mystical
practice of rabita. Rabita, it will be recalled, was employed by Shaykh Khalid
in an innovative way to consolidate his tariqa behind the modernizing project
of the Ottoman Empire. He demanded that all disciples in his offshoot of the
Naqshbandiyya, even those who had never met him, bind their hearts directly to
him rather than to their actual masters. For Hasan Khan and Alusi this novelty

Modernity from Within: Islamic Fundamentalism and Sufism25
was nothing but bidʾa (reproachable deviation), with no basis in the Qurʾan and
Sunna, amounting to a kind of idolatry or misguidance.
86
Shaykh Khalid’s innovative use of rabita represents the acme as well as the
limits of the pre-modern Sufi reformist tradition. Masterfully handling the
mystical resources at hand, Khalid managed to turn the highly charged murshid–
murid relationship into the basis of an effective socio-religious movement that
in the early part of the nineteenth century influenced the policy of the strongest
Muslim state of the day. For the Ahl-i Hadith and Salafis towards the end of
that century this was no longer enough. Intersubjective relationships proved
inadequate to cope with the new challenges emanating from the West and
from the state. Making full use of the properties of print culture, the proto-
fundamentalists sought to transcend rather than further extend the Sufi reformist
bond by introducing the principle of impersonal objective relationship. This was
provided by the idea of a return to the scriptures, especially as developed in
the teachings of the Ibn Taymiyya school.
87
Thus, from one angle, the critique
or the rabita marks the onset of the contemporary confrontation between
Islamic fundamentalism and Sufism. From another angle, the alternative return
to the Qurʾan and Sunna may be seen as the continuation of the Sufi quest to
modernize Islam by other means.
Our second moment revolves around the essay written by Hasan al-Banna
in completion of his studies at Dar al-Ulum in Cairo in 1927 concerning his
plans after graduation and the means to realize them. Banna asserted that there
were two ways to help others and counsel them on the path of God: the easier
and safer way of true Sufism, which in essence means sincerity, worship and
directing the heart solely towards God, and the worthier way ordained by the
Qurʾan and the Prophet of education and guidance, which adds to the first
involvement with the people. Believing that under the impact of westernization
Muslims became estranged from their religion and forgot their glorious ancestors,
Banna chose the second way: teaching children in the mornings and providing
religious instruction to their fathers in the evenings.
88
With this choice, the
autobiographical narrative implies, were laid the seeds of the Muslim Brothers
Society and of its mission to preach Islam (da ʿwa) to the people.
Hasan al-Banna’s weighing towards the education epitomizes the desire to
transcend but also preserve Sufism within modern Islam. Intuitively realizing
that in the twentieth century the Sufi tariqa could no longer serve as the vehicle
of reform, Banna was looking for new forms of organization and mobilization
better suited to contribute to the nationalist struggle and thereby secure

Sufis and Salafis in the Contemporary Age26
the Islamic character of the future independent state. The expanding public
schooling, literacy and communication would soon lead him to adopt the social
movement model with its ordered structures, elaborate regulations, fixed criteria
for membership and ideological propagation through public lectures and
magazines. The reduction of Sufism to mere spirituality thus epitomizes the next
stage in Islamic fundamentalism’s confrontations with Sufism. Still, as a pietistic
organization, the Islamic movements may also be regarded as the modern
embodiment of the reformist Sufi tariqa. The Muslim Brothers in particular,
under the leadership of its al-murshid al-amm (the Supreme Guide), may well be
construed as a Sufi brotherhood transformed.
The final moment concerns the reports that began to pour in during the
summer of 2002 from Iraq, following the invasion of the country by the United
States and its allies. According to these reports, the radical Islamic group of
Ansar al-Islam, an affiliate of al-Qaiʾda that infiltrated Iraq in the wake of the fall
of the Saddam Hussein regime, desecrated tombs and destroyed shrines of the
Naqshbandi Sufi brotherhood in southern Kurdistan. Subsequently they drove
out populations of towns where, according to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan,
democratic government and religious pluralism were established.
89
In the eyes of
Ansar al-Islam and its al-Qaʾida sponsors there was no real difference between
the coalition-forced indigenous authoritarian governments and the Sufis. The
defilement of the Naqshbandi graves in Kurdistan thus encapsulates the radicals’
endeavour to sever the tie between Islamic fundamentalism and Sufism as part
of their global struggle against un-Islam.
The forgetting of tradition
The constitution of fundamentalism as the hegemonic discourse of modern Islam
depended on the marginalization of its Sufi Other. From this perspective direct
reference to the scriptures and the example of the early community was merely
designed to bypass latter-day reformist Sufism, while its equation with current
popular manifestations was meant to exclude it from the orthodox fold. Both
strategies amount to concealing the fundamentalists’ debt to their Sufi predecessors.
Through a half-conscious exercise of collective amnesia, the founders of the
various fundamentalist trends, and still more their less perceptible followers,
practically forgot the prominent role that Sufi masters and brotherhoods filled in
the pre-modern efforts at the renewal and revival of Islam. Concomitantly, they
also deemphasized their own personal roots in the Sufi tradition.

Modernity from Within: Islamic Fundamentalism and Sufism27
Islamic fundamentalists normally overlook in their talks and writings the
wide-ranging Sufi reformist tradition that preceded them. Mustafa al-Bakri,
Ahmad al-Darqawi, Shaykh Khalid or Ahmad Ahsaʾi are barely known today to
the respective Sunni or Shiʿi fundamentalist-dominated general public, despite
the important religious and political role that their Sufi movements played in
their societies. Scripturalist Sufis such as Ahmad Ibn Idris, Shah Waliullah and the
Akhbaris are remembered primarily for their exoteric teachings, while the Jihadi
Sufis ʿAbd al-Qadir al-Jazaʾiri, Imam Shamil and Muhammad Ahmad the Mahdi
are evoked for their heroic exploits against foreign intruders and indigenous
unbelievers. When referring to their own Sufi upbringing, fundamentalists often
give the impression that this is something they have left behind.
Undoubtedly, some Islamic fundamentalists kept their affiliation to the Sufi
aspect of Islam. This is the case with Nadwi, who along with his close connections
with the Saudi-Wahhabi establishment and with the Society of the Muslim
Brothers also functioned as a Naqshbandi Sufi master. Another prominent Sufi-
oriented fundamentalist was Saʿid Hawwa, spokesman of the Syrian Muslim
Brothers, who was associated with the Khalidi offshoot of the Naqshbandiyya.
Hawwa undertook to acquaint the Islamic movement with the spiritual aspect of
Islam,
90
and proffered the loose networking of the Sufi brotherhoods as a model
for the reorganization of its Syrian branches in the face of the oppressive Baʿth
regime.
91
These, however, are exceptions that only prove the rule. Yusuf al-Qaradawi,
one of the most visible Islamic thinkers on the contemporary global scene, is
willing to give Sufism a place in the constitution of the Muslim personality. He
immediately clarifies, though, that his model is taken from the early ascetics,
rather than the more recent mystic philosophers and brotherhood leaders.
His is ultimately an ethical scriptural mysticism.
92
The late Egyptian scholar
Muhammad al-Ghazzali’s judgement is harsher, coming close to rejecting
Sufism altogether. He blames Islamic mysticism for allowing foreign teachings
to infiltrate Islam and spread false ideas among the masses that encourage them
to renounce the self and the world. It thus generated fatalism, weakened Islam
from within, and precipitated its surrender to the West.
93
Islamic fundamentalists generally show a more positive attitude towards
Sufi masters who influenced their own upbringing. Still, when describing these
figures in their autobiographical sketches, our main sources of information on
these early phases of their lives, they tend to present the Sufi legacy in a truncated
way. The Sufi reformist traditions with which these preceptors were affiliated are
often overlooked, as if they came out of the blue. Thus, ʿAbduh fails to specify to

Sufis and Salafis in the Contemporary Age28
which brotherhood belonged the uncle who taught him the reality of belief and
returned him to the course of study
94
; Rida does not bother to mention who the
Naqshbandi Shaykh was whose dhikr ceremonies he and his friends frequented
in their youth in Tripoli
95
; Banna gives us no hint as to the identity of the local
Hasafi brotherhood with which he was deeply engaged at the beginning of his
career
96
; and Qutb’s early experience of ‘Sufism’ seems to have been limited to the
holy man of his village and the folk religion surrounding him.
97
The Sufi Other
Although victimized, Sufism has refused to become the passive object of Islamic
modernity. On the contrary, it countered the fundamentalists’ disavowal of their
shared legacy by reconstituting them as (pre-modern) ‘Wahhabis’ and its Self as
the modern Islamic Other. Contemporary Sufis share in the hegemonic discourse
of return to the fundamentals, but differ in their quest to modernize by improving
rather than transcending their living reformist tradition. This division has a clear
social dimension. Sufis associated with the urban middle class and exposed to
Western culture are prone to turn to the fundamentalist ideology and collective
action, while those coming from the lower classes in the cities and villages are
bent on keeping Islamic modernization within the bounds of Sufi praxis. As
subalterns, to perpetuate their tradition and fend off radical aggression the latter
often ally with one or another of the secular forces of modernity: the state, the
public sphere and, with the onset of globalization, increasingly the West.
The modernization of Sufism has taken many forms under the new hegemony
of Islamic fundamentalism. To illustrate the paradoxes involved, I again present
three emblematic cases, this time from the contemporary scene, each featuring
one major Sufi strategy. All three concern the Khalidi branch of the Naqshbandi
brotherhood, whose prominence in the Sufi reformist tradition should be
apparent by now. The first case is that of the Syrian Shaykh Ahman Kuftaru
(1912–2004), who opted for collaboration with the Baʿthist state in spite of its
sectarian and secular character. Nominated Grand Mufti in 1964, shortly after
the Baʾth officers’ takeover, Kuftaru was given in exchange for his loyalty free
hand to develop his tariqa and build a nationwide network of religious colleges
and schools. Promoting a learned and discrete form of Sufism, he embraced
ijtihad, stressed the need to interpret Islam in the light of modern needs and
engaged in interfaith dialogue. Kuftaru also sympathized with the Muslim

Modernity from Within: Islamic Fundamentalism and Sufism29
Brothers movement, but was utterly opposed to the militant course adopted by
its radical wing, which led to its demise in the Hamah debacle of 1982.
98
Our second case revolves around the Iskenderpasa mosque in Istanbul, from
where the Naqshbandi engaged the Turkish public sphere despite the official ban
on Sufi activity. Following the relaxation of state control in the 1950s, Shaykh
Zahid Kotku instituted there a religious ‘open university’ that attracted students
from far and wide, among them prominent future politicians such as President
Turgut Ozal and the Islamic Prime Ministers Necmettin Erbakan and Recep
Tayyip Erdogan. His successor Shaykh Esad Cosan focused after 1980 on the
development of a wide network of religious schools, economic enterprises run
along business lines and several magazines and a radio station, through which
he propagated a combined vision of Islamic and capitalism. Threatened by the
secular state rather than by any Islamic fundamentalist movement, Kotku and
Cosan used the Naqshbandi practice of subha (spiritual company) to reframe
Sufism as an Islamic morality capable of securing private property while checking
the excesses of the rapid capitalist development of the country.
99
Our third and final case concerns the Haqqani offshoot of the Naqshbandiyya,
which, notwithstanding the prevailing misgivings about Islam in the West, directs
its operations to the global scene. Shaykh Nazim ‘Adil al-Haqqani, a Turkish
Cypriot, established his first Western community in 1974 in London, and later
extended his operations to other European countries and to North America.
These are integrated with branches in the Middle East, South Asia and elsewhere
into a transnational network of Sufi centres, each engaged in education, social
work and preaching in accordance with local circumstances. Haqqani regards
Western civilization as barbarous and longs to see the Ottoman Caliphate restored.
Concomitantly, he shows unbridled animosity to ‘Wahhabism’, and in this spirit
he directed his deputy in the Western hemisphere, Shaykh Hisham al-Kabbani,
to testify before the US Congress on Muslim extremism in America. On the
other hand, Haqqani is also engaged in the New Age culture and propagates a
syncretistic apocalyptic vision employing Christian and universal symbols along
with traditional Muslim eschatology.
100
Conclusion
Islamic fundamentalism and contemporary Sufism are both the products of
modernity. Of course, each claims roots in previous strands of the living Islamic

Sufis and Salafis in the Contemporary Age30
tradition. The fundamentalists purport to follow the teachings of the medieval
theologians Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya and their pre-modern
Wahhabi followers. Sufis draw on their rich legacy, from the early mystics
through Ibn ʿArabi’s, or in the Shiʿa case Mulla Sadra’s, theosophical system to
the wide variety of brotherhoods throughout the Muslim lands. Yet each of the
two trends appropriates, reinterprets and follows its antecedents in light of the
new realities of the modern world. Fundamentalists embrace the discourse of
reason and progress, and organize within the public sphere in socio-religious
movements in opposition to the colonial and post-colonial state. Sufis stress the
need for spirituality and engage the public sphere through their brotherhoods
in collaboration, according to circumstance, with the state, the middle class or
the West.
In the course of the past century and a half Islamic fundamentalism and
Sufism have developed mutually hostile discourses and practices. Each came
to regard the other as a deviation from ‘true’ Islam and a major impediment
to its modernization. For the fundamentalists, who hold a hegemonic
position in the contemporary Islamic arena, latter-day Sufism represents
superstition, backwardness and submissive collaboration with infidels. For
the Sufis, who are often in retreat, the radical brand of fundamentalism is
tantamount to religious fanaticism and violence and the source of Islam’s bad
name. Still, along with the virulent confrontations there is also a measure
of continuity between the two trends. Islamic fundamentalism arose out
of pre-modern Sufi reformist traditions, which espoused direct reliance on
the scriptures and the ancestors’ model, consolidated their organizational
structures and occasionally waged Jihad against colonial intruders and
indigenous Westernized rulers. Sufism, for its part, has been affected by the
fundamentalist discourse of return to the scriptures, its critique of popular
practices and its quest to modernize.
In their continuities as well as in their contradictions, Islamic fundamentalism
and Sufism have helped construct each other as modern subjects. To be sure,
each strives to conceal this mutual dependence. Fundamentalists have ‘forgotten’
the pre-modern Sufi reformist legacy and downplayed the role of its masters
in their own upbringing. Sufis have associated radical fundamentalism with
Wahhabism, the major pre-modern force hostile to the mystical aspect of Islam.
From its beginnings in the late nineteenth century the inner modernization
of Islam has been articulated through the expansion of the fundamentalist
ideology at the expense of the Sufi experience. In view of the present wave of

Modernity from Within: Islamic Fundamentalism and Sufism31
violence in the name of Islam, one can only wonder if ‘remembering’ Sufism
and a more balanced development between the scriptural and spiritual aspects
of Islam could have helped arrest the fundamentalist drift to the radical camp
and thereby facilitated a more peaceful integration with the globalizing modern
civilization.

2
Egyptian Sufism Under the Hammer:
A Preliminary Investigation into
the Anti-Sufi Polemics of
‘Abd al-Rahman al-Wakil (1913–70)
Richard Gauvain
God desired that the truth be known about Sufis from their own tongues. So
they demonstrated in the name of 8 million Sufis. People thought that they
were demonstrating in the name of 8 million Muslims!! But they refused the
name with which God has called us. Perhaps they lost their path to it, as
they set about composing their objections in the name of the dead, in the
name of graves, and in the name of the sins that take place as the result of
their falsehood, which they call ‘al-mawalid’!!
1
As the nature of the relationship between Sufism and Salafism in any setting is
likely to be complex, the temptation to present these ideologies as if they are
irreconcilably opposed must, of course, be resisted.
2
This initial caveat behind us,
there would be little point in arguing that Egypt’s Salafis and Sufis – or indeed
those in most other countries – do not disagree on many important issues of
faith and practice.
3
And the fact that certain members of Egypt’s wider Salafi
community sought to capitalize on the chaos following Hosni Mubarak’s deposal
by launching a flurry of attacks against Sufi targets has convinced observers that
Egypt’s Salafi–Sufi divide is greater, and more acrimonious, than ever.
4

What seems to have been forgotten – not only by some Western commentators,
but also by many Egyptian Muslims themselves – is that, before the Revolution,
Sufism was not considered by the vast majority of Egyptian Salafis to be an issue
of pressing importance. This is not to say, of course, that the Salafis had not been
vehemently criticizing Sufis past and present. Established many years ago, the

Sufis and Salafis in the Contemporary Age34
modus operandi of Egyptian Salafism, particularly in the field of da‘wa, involves
sustained diatribe against the Sufis, Shi‘is, Philosophers, Kharijis (and other
individuals who, from the Salafi perspective, are mistaken in their claims to be
Muslim). Notwithstanding the fact that it was (and presumably still is) quite
common to hear Salafis describing ‘the majority of Egyptians [as] chained to
Sufism through their ignorance and superstition’ (aghlabayat al-misriyyin lissa
murtabita bi’l-tasawwuf, bisubub takhallafuhum wa khurafatuhum),
5
the reason
that Egypt’s Salafis were not, at least during the period in which I carried out
the bulk of my fieldwork (2006–9), as interested in vilifying Sufis as they were
in criticizing Israel (and ‘the Jews’), the West, Westernized Egyptians, the media,
liberals, Christians, and often a mixture of all of these, was that this particular
battle was thought to have been won some years beforehand.
6
This chapter introduces ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Wakil (1913–70), celebrated within
Egyptian Salafi circles (and beyond) as ‘the Hammer of Deviations’ (al-hadim
al-tawaghit), and the man believed by Ansar al-Sunna al-Muhammadiyya
(Egypt’s earliest and historically most influential Salafi movement) to have done
most to inflict defeat upon the Sufis.
7
1 Attitudes of contemporary Egyptian Salafis
regarding al-Wakil and his polemics
Al-Wakil is virtually un-cited by Western sources and, on the few occasions
he is mentioned, there seems to be little if any awareness of the esteem in
which he continues to be held by Egypt’s Salafis. Only two Western scholars
make any reference to al-Wakil’s polemical stances. Commenting on al-Wakil’s
(‘pretentiously titled’) Masra‘ al-Tasawwuf, Alexander Knysh dismisses its author
merely as another ‘anti-Sufi’, whose ‘personal abhorrence of Sufism’ prompts
him to accuse Muslims of ‘fostering bygone superstitions and of contributing
to the overall economic and cultural decline of Muslim societies’. For Knysh,
al-Wakil’s attitudes are ‘typical of the Egyptian liberal intellectuals of the 1950s’.
8

By contrast, in her inquiry into the treatment of Baha’is and Jehovah’s Witnesses
in Egypt, Johanna Pink describes al-Wakil in passing simply as a ‘Wahhabi’.
9

As we shall see, however, in his attitude to Sufism, al-Wakil is neither a typical
liberal nor a Wahhabi.
Notwithstanding his anonymity within Western academic circles, al-Wakil
was Ansar al-Sunna’s third leader and, for over a decade, the editor of its main
periodical, al-Hadi al-nabawi.
10
Previously, Ansar al-Sunna had been led by

Egyptian Sufism Under the Hammer 35
its founder, Muhammad Hamid al-Fiqqi (or simply Hamid al-Fiqqi) and ‘Abd
al-Razzaq al-‘Afifi. Each figure – al-Fiqqi, al-‘Afifi and al-Wakil – is attributed
a paradigmatic role in the movement’s origin saga. Tirelessly bustling between
Saudi Arabia and Egypt, al-Fiqqi emerges as its great proselytizer by setting up
not one but two Salafi journals, both inspiring generations of significant recent
scholars. Garnering praise from the most important Salafis of the modern
generation – and notably from his Saudi Arabian students, Ibn Baz, al-Salah –
al-‘Afifi is recognized as Ansar al-Sunna’s most influential scholar.
11
Al-Wakil’s
contributions to Ansar al-Sunna is, however, what here concerns us. As should
be clear from his moniker, ‘the Hammer of Deviations’, al-Wakil was first and
foremost a polemicist; and his attacks on Egypt’s communities of Baha’is,
‘philosophers’ (falasifa) and ‘heretics’ are still cited by Salafi aggressors.
12
Without
a doubt, however, in al-Wakil’s view, the worst of all Muslim deviants are the
Sufis – not, we should add, just the monistic proponents of ‘drunk Sufism’, such
as Mansur al-Hallaj (d. 922) or Muhyi al-Din Ibn al-‘Arabi (d. 1240), but all Sufis,
past and present.
Unlike other Ansar al-Sunna scholars, al-Wakil’s reputation, as ‘the Hammer
of Deviations’, and arch anti-Sufi, extends beyond the relatively narrow confines
of Ansar al-Sunna. The majority of my field research was carried out with
individuals who, while often connected to Ansar al-Sunna (in that they prayed in
its mosques and attended its classes), are not deeply affiliated with this movement.
In fact, they are familiar with only a handful of the early Ansar al-Sunna scholars.
To be specific, they know of al-Fiqqi (though few have read his works), al-‘Afifi,
the learned hadith expert Ahmad Shakir, al-Wakil and no others.
13
Presumably
because of the emphasis on polemic within modern Egyptian Salafi circles,
al-Wakil’s work seemed to be the best known of these early Ansar al-Sunna
scholars.
14
Indeed, his reputation extends beyond Egypt itself, and he continues
to be mentioned respectfully by today’s Saudi Arabian elites. On the back cover
of the Majmu‘at maqallat volumes (see immediately below), for instance, Salih
bin Fawzan al-Fawzan (b. 1933), member of the Kingdom’s highly influential
Permanent Committee and Council of Senior Scholars, observes that: ‘among the
strongest answers [to the excesses of Sufism] are the books of Shaykh al-Islam,
Ibn Taymiyya and his student, Ibn Qayyim, as well as [those works by] a group
of contemporary scholars, such as ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Wakil, in his work Masra‘
al-tasawwuf. From a modern Salafi’s perspective, this is high praise indeed.
With perhaps three exceptions (Ibn Baz, al-‘Uthaymin and al-Albani),
generalizing about the influence of individual scholars on the wider
contemporary Salafi movement is problematic. In this chapter, my focus remains

Sufis and Salafis in the Contemporary Age36
primarily with Ansar al-Sunna, al-Wakil’s own Salafi organization and among
those who remember him best. The fact that al-Wakil’s struggle against Sufism
is still considered important by Ansar al-Sunna is immediately clear from the
way in which this movement continues to honour his legacy.
15
In a recently
published, lavishly bound two-volume compilation of his works, Majmu‘at
maqallat al-‘allama ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Wakil (2010), we find more than half
the total number of al-Wakil’s articles were dedicated to criticizing Egypt’s most
famous Sufis and/or to dispatching the country’s tariqas.
16
Al-Wakil’s most
famous monograph on the subject of Sufism, Hadhihi hiya al-Sufiyya ( These are
the Sufis), as well as his commentary to Ibn ‘Umar al-Biqa‘i’s Tanbih al-ghabi
ila takfir Ibn ‘Arabi ( A Warning to the Fool Regarding the Heresy of Ibn ‘Arabi),
entitled Masra‘ al-tasawwuf ( The Destruction of Sufism), are available to download
from the movement’s website, where they are lauded enthusiastically.
17
And we
note that, to date, Ansar al-Sunna’s Heritage Department (Qism al-Turath) has
dedicated festschriften only to its most significant scholars: al-Fiqqi, al-‘Afifi, the
famous hadith scholar Ahmad al-Shakir, and ‘Abd al-Wakil alone have received
this honour, the latter in a work entitled ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Wakil wa qadiyyat
al-tasawwuf ( ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Wakil, and the Matter of Sufism). This work is
particularly important to the present chapter as it neatly organizes al-Wakil’s
main arguments from his many publications into chapters, while simultaneously
prioritizing the material Ansar al-Sunna now deems most important. As we
shall see, throughout this festschrift, al-Wakil’s voice is quoted directly whenever
expert knowledge is required, either to rebut the arguments of influential Sufi
scholars, or to cast doubt on the Islamic credentials of specific Sufi beliefs and
rituals.
The highly personal nature of his attack on Sufism renders al-Wakil’s voice
distinctive, as well as quintessentially Egyptian. In terms of content, however,
the originality of his polemic is a matter for debate.
18
Intriguingly, however, I
never encountered anyone within Ansar al-Sunna circles (or for that matter
within any Egyptian Salafi circles) who doubted al-Wakil’s success in thoroughly
demolishing the main arguments of Sufism’s most significant scholars. So why,
precisely, is al-Wakil considered such an impressive polemicist? Perhaps the
passion, vitriol and fluency of his writing go some way towards answering this
question. Today’s leaders of the Ansar al-Sunna movement, however, are more
likely to attribute al-Wakil’s success to his status and performance as ‘a complete
Salafi’ (‘salafi mutlaq ’), one who is able to combine superior scholarship
with tireless activism.
19
In his record of the movement, for instance, Ahmad

Egyptian Sufism Under the Hammer 37
al-Tahir’s notes that, in addition to publishing a remarkable quantity of valuable
literature – in particular, Hadhihi hiyya al-Sufiyya, ‘one of the strongest rebuttals
of the thought which underpins the Sufi manhaj’, and generously contributing
forty-five articles entitled ‘views on Sufism’ (nazarat fi’l-tasawwuf) to al-Hadi
al-nabawi
20
– al-Wakil gave lectures across the towns and villages of Egypt. In
addition to his impressive reserves of energy, the Salafi shaykh is recognized as
possessing great courage. Al-Tahir relates how al-Wakil even went to court to
defend a group of fellow Ansar al-Sunna scholars. Apparently a Sufi critic had
‘accused them of attacking the dignity (al-karama ) of Sufism’. The outcome of this
encounter is not mentioned, but al-Wakil is congratulated for his bravery and
skill in providing ‘evidence and the proofs against their [the Sufis’] beliefs’.
21

In personal interviews with rank and file members of Ansar al-Sunna and
other Egyptian Salafis, the same reasons for al-Wakil’s success – his robust
scholarship and energetic, brave proselytizing – were cited with frequency. In
addition to these qualities, however, my respondents also spoke enthusiastically of
al-Wakil’s other merits. Perhaps the claim most often expressed was that al-Wakil
gained his unique insights into the heart of Sufism through his upbringing in a
village community saturated with traditional Sufi ideas, symbols and practices.
According to my respondents, it was this experience that allowed him ‘to see
through’ (yiktishif ) the pretences of Egypt’s Sufis. Having suffered at their hands,
his mission was one of mercy: ‘it is very clear that al-Wakil really cared about
ordinary Egyptians; he couldn’t abide for someone to hurt someone else in
the name of religion!’ (‘wa bayn ’awi in al-Wakil kan biyafakkar fi’l-masriyin
al-‘adiyyin ‘ashan huwa makansh biyistahmil had yizlim had bi-ism al-din’).
22

Another often-repeated claim (not explicitly mentioned in the Ansar al-Sunna
texts) is that al-Wakil was simply more thorough in his attacks on all branches
and manifestations of Sufism than other Salafi critics. By contrast with other
Egyptian Salafis (even his peers in Ansar al-Sunna), my respondents observed,
al-Wakil understood the importance of the utter elimination of Sufism, ‘root and
branch’ – so that no trace of it remained to poison Islam in the future. In this
latter task, several individuals drew attention to the fact that al-Wakil chose to
attack the most popular and historically embedded of Sunni Sufi scholars, Abu
Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111).
23

As noted, there is currently very little information available on Ansar
al-Sunna’s variant of Egyptian Salafism (n. 7). Focusing on its most celebrated
polemicist, ‘The Hammer of Deviations’, this chapter represents, I hope, a small
step towards rectifying this lacuna. Its main aim is to delve into those aspects

Sufis and Salafis in the Contemporary Age38
of al-Wakil’s personality and thought, which are believed by Egyptian Salafis,
and particularly by members of Ansar al-Sunna, to have contributed most
significantly to his success. To give a sense of his literary approach and style,
al-Wakil is here quoted at length. In itself, this is quite unusual: with certain
exceptions (of whom bin Laden is the most prominent), the voices of modern
Salafis are normally only included in brief, sensational(ized) fragments (on
jihad, women, Jews and so on).
This chapter continues with al-Wakil’s description of his early days in Tanta,
where his gradual ‘conversion’ from Sufism to Salafism took place (2.a). Next,
it explores the nature of his polemic against the figure of the Sufi shaykh,
specifically in light of his youthful experiences (2.b). Striving to reflect something
of the thoroughness of these polemics, the third section begins by considering
his vehement rejection of the Sufi concept of ‘asceticism’ (al-zuhd) (3.a); it
then explores his criticisms, both intellectual and personal, of Abu Hamid
al-Ghazali, which remain perhaps his most controversial statements (3.b). The
chapter concludes by probing the reasons as to why al-Wakil’s key ideas continue
to resonate so profoundly within contemporary Ansar al-Sunna (and wider
Egyptian Salafi) settings, whereas some of his other ideas and attitudes – most
specifically his apparent fondness for the research of ‘Orientalist’ scholars – no
longer appeal to the modern Egyptian Salafi (4).
2 From Sufism to Salafism
2.a Al-Wakil’s ‘Conversion’
Familiar with his autobiography, my respondents in Ansar al-Sunna agreed that
al-Wakil truly understood Sufism because, as a youth, he had lived it.
24
Indeed,
two individuals separately noted how al-Wakil’s journey from a naïve child, eager
to learn, yet brought up practising the rituals of Sufism, to a mature and pious
scholar, who realizes that these rituals have nothing to do with Islam, mirrors
the journey of Egypt’s Salafis themselves from the late nineteenth into the mid-
twentieth century, during which time they threw off the shackles of tradition and
superstition so as to immerse themselves in the study of Qur’an and Sunna.
The following characteristically colourful passage, from the introduction to
Masra‘ al-tasawwuf – published in 1953, when al-Wakil was around forty years
old – distils this journey, from Sufism to Salafism, for the reader.
25
The passage
begins with a young al-Wakil – referring to himself (in the third person) as ‘the

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préparait guère à l'avoir: je veux bien déjeuner, mais là, dans ma
chambre, et en regardant mon sac de voyage!
Grand'mère lève les bras au ciel; mais le docteur prononce:
—C'est parfait! c'est parfait!... Allons, madame Coëffeteau, il ne sera
pas dit que vous n'aurez pas une fois passé un caprice à votre
petite-fille!
Et il lui souffle je ne sais quoi à l'oreille. La pauvre grand'mère, aussi
bouleversée que si elle eût renié son Credo, commande qu'on me
serve dans ma chambre. Mais alors, c'est moi qui, par égard pour la
douleur qu'une telle fantaisie cause à grand'mère, déclare que je
descendrai déjeuner à la salle à manger.
Pendant qu'on me servait, toute seule, après la famille, mon fiancé
était revenu prendre des nouvelles; il se tenait dans le salon avec
mon frère arrivé du matin, et j'entendais qu'il s'informait beaucoup
de lui et le faisait causer. Lorsque je les eus rejoints et que j'eus
tranquillisé tout le monde sur ma santé, ce fut M
me
Serpe qui
s'empara de mon frère. Elle le jugeait charmant, intelligent, exquis,
et, confiait-elle à maman, "si joli garçon!" M. Serpe le jugeait aussi
intelligent et d'esprit très "moderne;" il était étonné, et indigné, que
Paul gagnât si peu d'argent; il répéta ce qu'il avait promis autrefois:
"On pourrait faire à ce garçon-là une très jolie situation."
C'est en entendant cela que je compris surtout combien j'avais été
folle, ce matin, et combien, en toutes choses, grand'mère avait eu
raison: est-ce que M. Topfer aurait procuré une très jolie situation à
mon frère? Et quel autre mari eût pu lui procurer cela? J'étais folle!...
Ah! la raison!... la raison!...
Je dis à mon fiancé:
—Ne vous inquiétez pas trop: je suis folle; mais je vous jure que
c'est la première fois que cela m'arrive; j'ai toujours été très
raisonnable.
Il sourit; mon état ne l'inquiétait pas du tout. Il dit:

—Oh! oh! si vous connaissiez les femmes qui ont été élevées
autrement que vous!...
Il avait coutume de désigner ainsi sa sœur et toutes les femmes que
fréquentait sa sœur. Il en avait vu, sans doute, des caprices et des
lubies, près desquels ma nervosité, à la veille du mariage, était
vraiment négligeable! Aussi ne cessait-il de féliciter grand'mère de la
façon dont elle m'avait élevée. Grand'mère adorait son futur petit-
gendre.
Tout allait donc bien; il n'y avait pas à se tourmenter. Lorsque,
pendant la messe de mariage, je me mis à pleurer comme une
fontaine, je ne m'alarmai pas outre mesure; je ne fis même pas
d'efforts extraordinaires pour étouffer mes sanglots que mon mari
entendait; je me disais: "Il comprend si bien tout cela! il a connu des
femmes pires que moi!..." et je pleurais tranquillement sous mon
voile. Je savais d'ailleurs que cela arrive quelquefois: même, les deux
petites de la Vauguyon, qui avaient eu l'une et l'autre la chance
d'épouser un jeune homme dont elles étaient entichées, pleuraient
pendant la messe. Oh! quand M. Topfer joua!... quand la voix de M.
Vaufrenard, plus belle que jamais, emplit la nef de notre vieille
église!... quel ébranlement dans tout mon cœur!... L'idée ne me vint
pas, alors, que j'aurais pu épouser M. Topfer, donc cela avait bien
été un instant d'aberration tout à fait isolé; mais la musique et la
présence de Dieu, les deux grandes causes d'exaltation de ma
jeunesse, le souvenir de mes ivresses de couvent et de mon
romanesque amour pour mes chers "génies;" l'idéal de ma jeunesse
auquel se mêlait je ne sais quel espoir ou quel regret d'amour pour
un homme unique et bien à moi; le renoncement à tout cela; le
sentiment de mon entrée définitive en un monde où rien de mon
passé ne subsisterait; tout cela se mêlait pour moi en une sorte de
douceur mortelle; je me sentais me quitter moi-même, sans douleur
vive, mais avec une tristesse désolante qui s'épanchait par un flot
continu de larmes...
Une seule chose m'empêcha de m'abandonner à cette espèce de
mort et peut-être de m'affaisser sur mon prie-Dieu; ce fut une idée

bien pauvre en comparaison de ces grands mouvements de l'âme,
mais il faut la dire parce que ce sont souvent de telles réalités qui
nous sauvent: la peur de mouiller mon voile!
Il y eut, après la cérémonie, un déjeuner à la maison, non pas très
nombreux, mais auquel assistèrent les Vaufrenard, M. Topfer, M
me
Serpe, ma belle-mère maintenant, qui était aux cent coups parce
que son petit chien était malade, et les témoins de mon mari. L'un
de ces messieurs, un vieil ami, s'était chargé de réaccompagner la
maman Serpe à Paris par un train du soir; nous autres, les mariés,
devions "filer" tous les deux, seuls, subrepticement, dès 4 heures et
demie.
Ces derniers moments à la maison, que j'aurais voulu prolonger
encore et encore, si pénibles qu'ils fussent, me parurent pourtant
effroyablement longs. Il faisait très chaud, je me souviens; le grand-
père s'était retiré dans sa chambre pour faire la sieste; ma belle-
mère, qui commençait à exaspérer toute ma famille, était à la
cuisine où elle employait tous les domestiques aux soins de son
chien malade; les Vaufrenard et M. Topfer m'avaient fait leurs
adieux; maman, cependant bien fascinée par son gendre et si
patiente d'ordinaire, grommelait déjà contre lui parce qu'elle jugeait
"inhumain" qu'on fît monter une pauvre jeune femme en chemin de
fer par un temps pareil; quant à grand'mère, dont cette journée était
le triomphe, c'était elle qui, avec moi, avait le plus pleuré, et l'idée
de mon départ la mettait sens dessus dessous; elle errait dans toute
la maison, comme une âme en peine, cachant de son mieux ses
yeux rouges, qu'un arrière-fonds de sensibilité, toujours contenu par
des principes, avait submergés aujourd'hui. Maman et moi étions
restées longtemps, avec mon mari et ses témoins, dans le salon,
parce qu'elle n'osait sortir sans me faire signe de l'accompagner pour
me donner les conseils d'usage, et elle reculait, pâle, tremblante,
jusqu'à la dernière limite, ce douloureux moment. La voiture de

l'Hôtel de la Lamproie devait venir nous prendre à quatre heures;
quand maman entendit le petit "toc" qui précède de quelques
secondes la sonnerie de la pendule, elle se leva et me fit le signe.
Nous passâmes dans le corridor, puis dans la salle à manger,
quoiqu'il y eût une porte communiquant directement d'une pièce à
l'autre; mais je crois bien que maman ne savait pas trop où elle me
menait; dans la salle à manger nous trouvâmes la pauvre
grand'mère qui rangeait la verrerie sur le dressoir tout en
s'épongeant d'une main les yeux; elle disait:
—Les domestiques, ce n'est pas la peine de compter sur eux: ce
n'est pas trop d'eux tous pour un sale avorton de chien!
Maman sourit et dit à sa mère qu'elle avait été obligée de laisser un
instant seuls ces messieurs parce qu'elle avait un mot à me dire.
Grand'mère comprit, et par un sentiment délicat, à l'idée des choses
que maman allait devoir me confier à voix basse, elle se dirigea, en
retenant le bruit de ses pas, vers la porte du salon d'où nous venait
la voix de ces messieurs. Avant de poser la main sur le bouton, elle
voulut pourtant me faire, elle aussi, une dernière recommandation;
tout bas, elle me dit:
—N'oublie jamais, mon enfant, que ton mari t'a choisie parce que tu
étais une jeune fille bien élevée!
Elle poussa doucement la porte du salon, et une brutale parole lui
apporta la confirmation de ce qu'elle venait d'exprimer. Mon mari,
répondant, sans doute, aux compliments que lui adressaient de moi
ses témoins, disait:
—Moi, ce que j'ai cherché surtout dans un mariage de ce genre,
c'est la garantie de n'être pas...
La porte aussitôt refermée nous épargna le mot, hélas! facile à
suppléer, et que les circonstances rendaient tragique à nos oreilles.
Grand'mère n'entra pas au salon; glacée et blanche comme un
marbre, elle repassa par la salle à manger sans souffler mot, et
laissa à maman le temps de m'apprendre que j'appartenais
désormais à mon mari, corps et âme.

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Sufis And Salafis In The Contemporary Age Lloyd Ridgeon Editor

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