The Digital Sufi Gaze: Between Love, Longing and Locality in COVID Britain

Abstract

This article examines British Sufi responses to the COVID-19 pandemic within the broader context of Muslim experiences of and reactions to the pandemic. Set within a discussion pertaining to classical and contemporary expressions of Sufism, this article explores Sufi phenomena, including the murshid–murid (Sufi master–novice) dynamic, collective gathering and Sufi gaze (nazar) and whether these phenomena were possible within the inevitable digital environments Sufis were forced into as a result of the COVID pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, experienced in Britain. The author explores Sufi social and intellectual phenomena within classical and contemporary literature in relation to Sufi experiences in the West. She concludes that varied lived experiences and differing views on Sufism and both its classical and contemporary expressions were brought into question as a consequence of the COVID pandemic, the exploration of which are necessary in juxtaposition to one another to add nuance and depth and create holistic research of Sufi communities and Sufism more broadly, within contemporary Britain and further afield.