Globalization of redemptive sociality:al-AhbashandHaqqaniyyatransnational Sufi networks in West Asia and Central-Eastern Europe

Abstract

This article examines historical connectedness inside West Asia, that is, Levant, and beyond the region, specifically to North Caucasus and Central-Eastern Europe (Germany and Ukraine) maintained through the translocal Sufi communities, that is, Naqshbandiyya-Haqqaniyya and al-Ahbash. The article demonstrates how these two Sufi networks that originated in the 1970s–1980s in Levant and later spread across the globe through migration routes, missionary activities, and conversions are contextualized in the Western sociocultural milieu in terms of discourses, practices, and institutionalization. While dealing with “redemptive sociality” in the Sufi communities as a form of collective solidarity based on allegiance to a charismatic Sufi Shaykh, this article conceptualizes a distinction between the general or founding charisma of silsila represented by its founders and spiritual leaders, and locally constructed charisma negotiated by local Sufi community and its spiritual leader.