The conventional wisdom about the Islamic Republic views the political system in Iran as a republic of jurists (fuqaha’). Indeed a fundamental pillar of the system which emerged out of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 is Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh). This paper argues, however, that another consequential dimension of Iranian system is Islamic and particularly Shia mysticism. The paper substantiates this argument by reviewing the mystical credentials of the two most influential figures of Iranian politics during the past three decades, namely Ayatollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Khamenei. Before the Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini had become a well-established teacher of Islamic mysticism and Shia theosophy besides his acclaimed status as a grand Ayatollah (marja’). An avowed admirer of Sohrevardi, Ibn Arabi and other influential Urafa (Islamic mystics), he continued this sympathy as a statesman when, in his famous 1989 letter to Gorbachev, suggested the Soviet leader to study Islam through the works of Muslim mystics. In this letter, Ayatollah praised Ibn Arabi as a “great man” and invited Gorbachev to find an alternative to Communism in Sohrevardi’s School of Illumination, Hikmat-al-Ishraq. Furthermore, his most important contribution to Shia political thought, namely Velayat-e-Faqih (The Rule of Jurist), is heavily colored by his sympathy for mysticism. Both in discourse and practice, Velayat-e-Faqih has been shaped more by its Velayat element than its Faqih one. Velayat (Farsi word for Willaya in Arabic) has a heavy Shia-mystical connotation which goes beyond the simple translation as “Rule” or “Governance”. Velayat implies the spiritual superiority of the preeminent soul of the Pir (Sufi Master). Such overwhelming supremacy of Vali-e-Faqih stems not only from his Fiqh credentials but also from his believed status as someone with certain religious experiences. The same jurisdictional-mystical formulation of “Supreme Leader” position continued after Ayatollah Khomeini. Like his predecessor, Ayatollah Khamenei, himself, is a poet within the Shia-mystical literary tradition with a well-known interest in Persian classic literature which has been the medium of elaboration for many Sufis. Meanwhile, this mystical dimension of Islamic Republic brings an important extra-legal element into the Iranian politics, and has proved consequential in shaping Iranian national security discourse as during the Iran-Iraq war, the almost mystical devotion of Iran’s volunteer soldiers to Ayatollah Khomeini (as their spiritual mentor besides other things) was the official discourse of war.

The colonial regime in the Sudan 1898—1956 was neither sympathetic to sufi Islam nor its turuq. From its first day, the colonial state and its propaganda machine acted aggressively and indiscriminately against all forms of sufi representations or turq, their institutions of learning, and all forms of religious private practice which Kitchener described as “the deepest threat to the Sudan.” But Sudanese sense of resistance to the colonial state provided another model of reference and aversion when Sayyid Áli al-Merghani persistently and patiently succeeded not only to counter the colonial policy toward sufi Islam but also to restore al-Khatmiyya tariqa to be recognized by the state as a legitimate socio-religious practice without much constraint. Within a short time the change in the Sudanese religious field was expeditious and complete as most turuq proliferated in the open. The Khatmiyya became strongly established as religious organization providing an ‘infrastructure for a social movement activity in several ways.’ First, by providing “a repertoire of skills and a protected social structure, so that when a larger political ideology and movement impinge upon the group, the religious organizations and personnel can easily be mobilized. .... Second, religious participation creates networks of relations and similarities of perception that help unify later behavior. A third way that religious organizations may affect the readiness to participate in political social movements is more indirect. ” To most recuperating urban centers in the country, expanding farmers’ communities in the north, and nomadic groups in Eastern Sudan, the Khatmiyya reintroduced and reinforced in an organized manner a strong sense of brotherhood, solidarity and an orderly socialization system where cooperation is observed and turned into tangible rewards or a “structure of opportunity”. These processes which turned the Khatmiyya into what its activists described it later as safienat Noah [Noah’s ark], have produced social cohesion and a collective identity that turned the tariqa into a new socio-religious movement. It soon became apparent that the tariqa’s spirit and barka became the source of an emerging capitalistic accumulation of capital institutionalized and organized around Sayyid Áli with significant transformative potentials within the entire religious, social and political fields of power. Consequently, “in a short while there was comfort when it was reported that Áli al-Mirghani's prestige was rising 'owing to greater activity and the efforts of the Omdurman merchants.

Mohammad Ehsai’s works is hypothetically seen through the eyes of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Hubert Damisch, as an intellectual process, a thinking and active work of art. The viewer is presented with gestures that are emotional impressions of word, which by its nature is subjective and is meant to reflect a transcendental revelation. Maurice Merleau-Ponty deconstructs the opposition between subject and object, between the visible and the invisible, and between the sensible and the ideal. He reexamines the subject-object relationship and looks at both the perceiver and the perceived as interdependent. This concept sees subject and object uniting dialectically within a more basic reality. According to Merleau-Ponty, the objective body and the phenomenal body constitute a reciprocal intertwining - where the "seer and the visible reciprocate one another and we no longer know which sees and which is seen". By choosing abstract primary subjects such as words, thoughts and “ayat”, Mohammad Ehsai’s work articulates a metaphysical tradition, its target being the viewers’ consciousness. Ehsai’s painting is situated in the physicality of his work and the perspective it takes the spectator to see, the space of the word occupied in the Islamic context and the visual architecture that he constructs in word. This paper is on the “narrativity” of Ehsai’s art, which is on the narrativity of “word” itself, and based on the concept that the mind is essentially ‘literary’ in nature. One of the greatest purposes of the Quranic calligraphy has been to provide a visual blessing for the soul, so that it can be penetrated and exalted by the Divine light of ‘ayah” or “sign (of God)’. Within such context, at times, the legibility and the visual abstraction of letters become acceptable in relation to the validity and the serendipity of the blessing. The above notion describes Ehsai’s style of abstracting the Quranic words, and signifies the root of his abstraction, and the intended point of departure that is confidently taken by the educator Ehsai toward stretching the limits of legibility in the sacred art of calligraphy. This validity is what Ehsai tries to negotiate. Ehsai’s art is examined as being embedded and inextricable from experiences of his local culture, implying a shared cognition and consensus of meanings. The paper concludes that Mohammad Ehsai collapses the visual dependency on predetermined knowledge, and avoids a certain "tyranny and hegemony of reference " by abandoning accepted categories.

This paper starts with a historical sketch of the instances in Moroccan history where the saint acted as the ally- if not the agent- of the Sultan. The reasons of such alliances will be clarified, in order to fully grasp the genealogy of the current honeymoon between the Moroccan monarchy and the Sufi Boutchichi order headed by Sheikh Hamza. The Politicization of the order manifested in three instances: the nomination of one of its disciples as the minister of religious affairs, the nomination of the Guru’s son as a governor of the province of Berkane, and the call made by Sheikh Hamza to all Moroccans to rally behind the king Mohamed VI. Is the Boutchichi order acting as a politically acquiescent movement? Is it redefining political action outside of the avenues of classical protest? This paper tries to address these issues following several years of participant observation and a statistical survey in Morocco.