Recognizing Sufism: Contemplation in the Islamic Tradition By Arthur F. Buehler

Abstract

The history and argument in Recognizing Sufism may help to relieve the widespread misunderstanding (remarked by Hamid Algar, Principles of Sufism [1990], pp. i–xvii) that Sufism is ‘an extraneous growth’, even ‘a sectarian development’, and which may have motivated the recent terrorist killings of Sufi Muslims and the bombing of their shrines. This book is relevant also as a response to ‘the crisis of perception, on the part of a growing segment of Islam’s adherents, that the machinery of faith is faltering, and where there was once faith there are now reasons, and not very convincing ones; and where the faithful who had been ‘religious’ have become ‘religious-minded’ (Clifford Geertz, Islam Observed [1968], p. 61), instead of the faithful ‘holding’ their religious convictions, they are ‘held by’ them. Arthur Buehler’s survey is one of at least half a dozen on Sufism to be published in the last decade. However, his...