Levels of Religion Ron Geaves Chapter Outline Sikhism Hinduism The pragmatic or Kismetic realm Remedies and rituals The Dharmik realm Transcendental realm Qaumic Panthic Charisma and institutionalization Conclusion Discussion points Bibliography n his classical text, Sufi sm, fi rst published in 1950, A. J. Arberry writes that Sufi sm Ihad gone into decline by the end of the Middle Ages as a result of degeneration from its mystical origins to a corrupted form of religion consisting of tomb worship and a number of popular practices prevalent among rural people (Arberry, 1956). He states: It was inevitable, as soon as legends of miracles became attached to the names of the great mystics, that the credulous masses should applaud imposture more than true devotion; the cult of saints, against which orthodox Islam ineffectually protested, promoted ignorance and superstition, and confounded charlatanry with lofty speculation (1956, p. 119) www.bloomsbury.com/the-study-of-religion-2nd-edition-9781780938400 © George D. Chryssides and Ron Geaves, 2007, 2014 The Study of Religion: An Introduction to Key Ideas and Methods. London: Bloomsbury THE STUDY OF RELIGION Although it is possible to challenge Arberry’s main thesis by demonstrating that a number of Sufi mystics and their subsequent institutional orders have continued to appear in various parts of the Muslim world until the present time, of more importance to the theme of this chapter is the distinction that Arberry appears to be making between levels of religion: with a ‘high’ mysticism, on one hand and ‘low’ popular beliefs and practices, on the other (1956, p. 121). Arberry criticizes later Sufi sm for its lack of rationality, claims of miraculous powers, use of charms and amulets and associates it negatively with ‘cabbalism and witchcraft’. He appears to suggest that this division is most apparent in rural areas where ‘every village or group of villages acquired its local saint, to be revered and supported during his lifetime, worshipped and capitalised after his death’ (1956, p. 121). As a result of this focus on mystics and their poetry by Oriental scholars versed in ancient languages, the study of Sufi sm has seemingly suggested that Sufi sm itself was a long extinct tradition that fl ourished in Persia, Turkey and North Africa during a particular period of Islamic history and was represented by exceptional men and women who achieved high mystical awareness and expressed in ecstatic poetical forms (Geaves, 2000, p. 3). Living Sufi traditions, such as those prevalent in the Indian subcontinent, and practised by millions of adherents were therefore perceived as a form of religion that was left over after the decline of the classical tradition. Such an approach to Sufi sm not only distorts the living reality and complexity of contemporary Muslim belief and practice but it provides us with the problem of a value judgement being made between so-called high and low forms of religion. SUFISM lthough most commonly defi ned as Islamic mysticism, most Muslim Sufi s do not consider Athemselves to be mystical in any sense. To complicate matters, a large number of the Western adherents defi ne themselves as Sufi s but do not consider themselves to be Muslims. Most Muslims regard Sufi sm as simply the inner dimension of Islam that must accompany the exoteric domain of obedience to the shari’a (Islamic law). On the other hand, Western adherents often avoid the outer manifestations of Islam completely, preferring to adopt a form of ‘universal Sufi sm’ that is closer to the perennial wisdom propounded by universalists such as Aldous Huxley. Even in the fi rst half of the twentieth century, Western individuals were attracted to Sufi sm through the efforts of high-profi le fi gures such as Idries Shah (1924–96) or Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927) who came to Europe and North America to teach. These movements were highly eclectic themselves and lent themselves to the introduction of a different kind of Sufi sm that placed itself within an unfolding world mystical revelation that drew upon Gnostic, neo-Platonic, Christian, Buddhist and Hindu infl uences in addition to Islam. Within the world of Islam, Sufi sm is usually defi ned as formal allegiance to one of the many tariqas (a school or path of guidance) but there are nevertheless millions of traditional Muslims whose beliefs and practices have been shaped by the countless saints and pious followers of the www.bloomsbury.com/the-study-of-religion-2nd-edition-9781780938400 © George D. Chryssides and Ron Geaves, 2007, 2014 The Study of Religion: An Introduction to Key Ideas and Methods. London: Bloomsbury LEVELS OF RELIGION tariqas. The totality of this body of Muslims, including the tariqas which remain at their heart, prefers to be known as the Ahl as-Sunnat wa Jamaat. This title refers to the community of Sunni Muslims and indicates that the followers of the tariqas and their sympathizers see themselves as traditional Sunni Muslims as opposed to the new doctrines of the Wahhabi-inspired movements and their counter-claims to Sunni orthodoxy. Thus any study of Sufi sm must acknowledge two areas of complexity. The fi rst of these is that Sufi sm remains a highly visible player with regard to what defi nes orthodoxy in the Muslim world. The second concerns certain imbalances or misconceptions that still exist in the traditional methods of studying Sufi sm in the West. Muslims who have an allegiance to the Sufi tariqa feel that they have been marginalized, fi rst through misrepresentation in scholarly texts and second, through the vehement attacks of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Islamic reform movements. In the twentieth century, the independence of many Muslim nations created an internal struggle over what forms of government should exist in the newly created states. This struggle has given rise to the Islamic Movement in which a variety of groups are fi ghting to establish societies based upon the tenets and laws of Islam rather than imported Western models of governance. Once again Islam has come to symbolize terror, devastation and a threat to world peace. Sufi sm, on the whole, has escaped this latter distortion of Muslim culture and tradition. The Western media frequently represents the externals of Islam as an oppression of individual freedom but usually fails to comprehend the inner loyalties or spirit of the faith. In this context the continuing vitality of Sufi sm in the Muslim world is rarely mentioned. However, although Sufi sm is not branded with the latter distortion in regard to terrorism or extremism it has suffered considerably from academic and scholarly Orientalist approaches as much or more than any other eastern religious phenomenon. It could be argued that it is the desire for the exotic arising out of the ‘mysterious east’ that has always distorted traditional scholarly approaches to the study of Sufi sm. Eastern mysticism has often been the Orientalist’s paradise. The classic textual example for this approach is Fitzgerald’s translation of Omar Khayyam that in many respects represents the traditional method to the study of Sufi sm by the translation of the poetry of signifi cant Sufi mystics into a variety of European languages. As a consequence of this approach and its focus on long dead mystics, Sufi sm was turned into a virtually extinct tradition which was perceived to have fl ourished in Persia, Turkey and India during a particular period of Islamic history and was represented by exceptional men and women who achieved high mystical awareness and expressed it in ecstatic poetry. Later studies developed this approach by tending to focus on Sufi sm as an historical phenomenon, tracing its origins, rise, infl uence and subsequent decline. This scholarly focus on Sufi sm as a neo-Platonic mystical theosophy has served to distort the living reality of the complexity of contemporary traditional Muslim belief and practice. On the other hand, anthropologists have focused on case studies of cults formed around tomb shrines and eclectic practices which enter ‘orthodox’ Islam from rural societies in the Muslim hinterland. In doing so they have failed to acknowledge the unity of perception among traditional Muslims that links the tombs, saintly lineages, rural traditions, living saints and the network of tariqas which include the great mystic poets among their historic founders. It is this unity of allegiance which defi nes itself increasingly as Ahl as-Sunnat wa-Jamaat in an attempt to position itself as normative Islam. There are signs that these distorted approaches to the study of Sufi sm are beginning to change and that scholars like Schimmel (1985), Werbner (1998), Westerlund and Rosander (1998) and Geaves www.bloomsbury.com/the-study-of-religion-2nd-edition-9781780938400 © George D. Chryssides and Ron Geaves, 2007, 2014 The Study of Religion: An Introduction to Key Ideas and Methods. London: Bloomsbury THE STUDY OF RELIGION (2004) are beginning to re-examine Sufi sm as a vibrant living tradition still existing at the heart of traditional Islam. Suggested reading Burckhart, T. (1990), An Introduction to Sufi sm. Northampton: Aquarian Press. Geaves, R. A. (2000), The Sufi s of Britain. Cardiff: Cardiff Academic Press. Lings, M. (1995), What is Sufi sm. Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society. Nicholson, R. (1989), The Mystics of Islam. Harmondsworth: Arkana. Rizvi, S. A. A. (1997), A History of Sufi sm in India Vol.1. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal. Gellner elaborates on Arberry’s suggestion that the form of Islam based on popular beliefs and practices is found mainly in rural areas, and provides a sociological analysis in which Islam can be divided into rural and urban forms with two sets of characteristics. The latter form is marked by strict monotheism, puritanism, stress on scriptural revelation and therefore on literacy, egalitarianism among the believers and consequently the absence of human mediation and its accompanying hierarchy, a minimization of elaborate ritual or mysticism and a focus on sobriety and moderation, and fi nally a stress on the observance of rules rather than emotional states.