Muslim Communities of Grace: The Sufi Brotherhoods in Islamic Religious Life * BY JAMIL M. ABUN-NASR

Abstract

This monograph by an emeritus professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, offers an eclectic overview of Sufi history. Abun-Nasr surveys Sufism's evolution from its origins in individual asceticism to the rise of formal, institutionalized spiritual brotherhoods. With attention to both Western scholarship and Arabic primary sources, this encyclopedic work links Sufi history to the broader debates over Islamic religious orthodoxy, spiritual authority and political power. Abun-Nasr's central argument is ‘that the cardinal Sufi beliefs were shaped by the Muslims’ preoccupation with the perennial problem of the leadership of their religious community’ (pp. 4–5). In the nine wide-ranging chapters that follow, he explores this assertion from a variety of angles across a vast historical and cultural continuum. Ch. 1, ‘The Problem of Religious Authority in Islam’, summarizes the power dynamics in the early Muslim community, charting the meteoric rise of Muslim empire and the rulers’ attempts to follow the Prophet's example. Under the ʿAbbasid dynasty, a power-sharing compromise allowed the ruling caliphs to recognize the ulema as the arbiters of Islamic law in exchange for political legitimacy and loyalty. And it is precisely at this moment that Sufis stepped on to the historical stage to challenge the status quo. In Abun-Nasr's words (p. 25), ‘Since its inception the Sufi movement was an apolitical religious movement … after the caliphs’ system of institutionalized religious leadership became consolidated in the second half of the ninth century, it came to represent the alternative ideal of the independence of the Muslim community's religious guidance from its political leadership.’