Review of Isobel Jeffery-Street, Ibn ‘Arabi and the Contemporary West: Beshara and the Ibn ‘Arabi Society

Abstract

Since the twelfth century, the shaping of Islamic religious thought throughout the Muslim world has been greatly influenced by Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi. It was through his works that the doctrines of Sufism, which had been implicit, became explicitly formulated. Although his influence had been primarily in the Muslim world, it has recently begun to be felt in the West. Isobel Jeffery-Street’s study sheds light upon the growth of his influence in Western societies. She notes, ‘This study investigates one recent aspect of the wider spread and creative reception of Ibn ‘Arabi’s ideas in the contemporary West’(p. 1). Thus, Isobel Jeffery-Street has sought to explore Ibn ‘Arabi’s influence through the prism of two organizations: the Beshara School primarily, as well as the Ibn ‘Arabi Society. Her research spans the late twentieth, early twenty-first century in England, and the U.S. The author is an academic in the field of Islamic Studies, as well as a coordinator of the Exeter Inter-Faith Group. The theoretical orientation of Jeffrey-Street’s narrative is an anthropological approach, in particular a phenomenological method, which she believes is best suited in analyzing Ibn ’Arabi’s influence upon the individuals involved in both organizations. ‘My purpose in using these anthropological methods of collecting data is to enable myself to develop an accurate, in-depth understanding of those individuals who helped create the Beshara School and Ibn ‘Arabi Society’ (p. 28). Since the role of the Beshara School was the teaching of the experiential aspects of Ibn ‘Arabi’s teachings, Jeffery-Street believed the most appropriate way to understand the school was through the understanding of the students experiences. At the same time she acknowledges the limitations this approach entails: ‘However, I also agree with his suggestion that the phenomenological methodological approach on its own may not do full justice to analysis and interpretation within the study of religious phenomenology, which could benefit from additional methodological tools’ (p. 20). Yet, her Cont Islam (2014) 8:311–313 DOI 10.1007/s11562-012-0238-3