The paper explores forms of meditative reflection on nature and existence (tefekkür) within the Suffa foundation, one of the many offshoots of the Nur movement in Turkey. This is a method which the inspirer and founder of this movement – Said Nursi (1876-1960) – elaborated in relation to his Qur'anic commentary, the Risale-i Nur. In this work Nursi re-interpreted the Naqshbandi Islamic tradition in which he had been educated in a reform-minded fashion, by merging the mystical poetical imaginaries and cosmologies of this tradition with a modern scientific view of nature. This allowed him to subvert the way that conventional Turkish secularists used science in their confutation of religion while, at the same time, offering Muslims with new avenues for cultivating their spirituality in a secularized society. In particular, I will show how the practice of tefekkür, even though usually thought of as being in opposition to other Sufi exercises such as dhikr, is based on an essentially mystic vision of existence, structured around the dichotomy between the manifest reality of this world and the hidden Reality of God. While in their discourses community brothers might wink with complicity at modern scientific discourse, and put a modernist emphasis on reasoning rather than on more ecstatic practices, their reflective method nevertheless aims to make people gain an awareness of such a true Reality lying behind the veil of this world’s appearances. Quoting both arguments from brothers in positions of authority and their reinterpretation by ordinary participants in community meetings, I will illustrate how during such meetings the Nur brothers reflect upon existence through the dense metaphors and poetical images offered by this cosmological framework. Finally, I will show that the Risale provides the Nur brothers with precise ontological discourses about the meaning and significance of life and death, in critical counterpoint to hegemonic modern liberal understandings of human freedom, responsibility and action.

One of the most enduring consequences of the revolution of 1979 in Iran has been a reflexive turn across class and gender lines toward better understandings of the Iranian self in its historical and cultural multiplicity. In neighborhood cultural centers as well as private homes, a variety of classes are offered on many subjects—the Qur’an, the poetry of Rumi, Hafez, and others, Islamic philosophy, Western philosophy, Jung, Yoga, lives of particular Imams or Sufi figures. In this paper, based on long term and on going fieldwork among a group of middle class, educated women in Tehran, I will examine the ways in which stories from the Masnavi and ghazals from Hafez are read and interpreted—locating and uncovering lessons from them for their own lives. The women in this group are interested in the ethical stances embodied in this poetry, and use its metaphors and images to make sense of friends and strangers and the torrents of daily life. This interaction with poetry is reflected in the ways in which they perform the namaz (salat in Arabic, the five obligatory prayers of Muslims). Just as they cultivate a searching stance vis-à-vis the poetry they read, their practice of namaz is inflected by their engagement with poetry. How is this neighborliness of poetry and prayer constituted? How does the back and forth between prayer and poetry help shape definitions of what constitutes an efficacious prayer? I will argue that poetry and prayer are viewed as forms of knowledge—there is a continuous striving to understand life through them. These are forms of knowledge that have no end point as every pass through the same poem, the same prayer, in different moments and different stages of life, brings with it a hope for new light. Namaz is a form of knowledge that is open to other forms of knowledge. It may be argued that such practices are “retreats” into the private sphere, as the state has taken over the public definition of acceptable Islam. I will argue that in fact what groups of private citizens such as this one are doing is a form of appropriation and not a retreat. This appropriation takes many forms and is quite widespread. The fact that it is less visible and self-consciously less “political” should not be interpreted as a retreat or as inconsequential for the future political directions of the country.

This paper examines how one particular group of West African Muslims understood the relationship between Sufi friendship with God (wil?ya) and devotional religious practice (?ib?da). In doing so it joins with the growing scholarly trend to see Sufi terminology, not as fixed concepts or typologies but as loaded and contentious markers in debates concerning the nature of God, the Muslim community, and correct practice within Muslim societies. Specifically, my research focuses on the community that developed around two figures - S?di al-Mukht?r al-Kunt? and his son, S?di Mu?ammad, who rose to prominence as powerful Sufi friends of God and religious scholars in the Southern Saharan desert during the second half of the eighteenth century. With a community of students, followers, and clients gathered around them they ran a robust trading network; engaged politically with other Saharan groups; trained disciples; and composed a vast corpus of texts in Arabic on topics from jurisprudence and grammar, to theology and Sufism. Both their pedagogical activities and their written works represented a shift in the West African Muslim discourse surrounding acceptable and unacceptable practice and would contribute greatly to a notable change in the understanding of Muslim social authority in the region. My work focuses on those Kunta texts which pertain to the cultural sphere of Sufism, not only because these formed almost half of their output; but, more importantly, because it was within these works that this community debated the range and meaning of Islamic devotional practice. Through close readings of these texts this paper will first show how the Kunta shaykhs and their students presented their followers with ritual religious practices that ranged from reciting the names of God (dhikr) and supplicatory prayer (du?a?), to crafting protective amulets (?irz), and using numerology, magical charts and tables, and letter magic to heal illnesses and control the jinn, angels, and spirit beings (ru??niyyat). I will then demonstrate how the Kunta texts consistently position these practices within the field of devotional Islamic practice (?ib?da) and link them to a specific Sufi intellectual framework defined by the presence of the living friend of God (w?l?) within the community. In this fashion, I will illustrate how the Kunta shaykhs both presented Islamic versions of ritual practice with efficacious and theurgic results and defined Sufi friends of God as the source of efficacious religious praxis – in the process positioning themselves the central figures of Southern Saharan society.

This presentation focuses on the concept of zuhd in the Shadhilliya tradition of Sufism and specifically contemporary expansions of its field of connotation. It is based on fieldwork carried out in Denmark, England, Jordan, Egypt and Syria between 2007 and 2013 within the confines of a transnational order of Sufism, the Shadhiliyya-Darqawiyya-Hashimiyya order under Sheikh Nuh Ha Mim Keller. Zuhd traditionally denotes a manner of living and being that is characterised by non-attachment to the dunya and living for the akhira. It implies renouncement of worldly pleasures, carnal desires and the material world. Zuhd furthermore means living out austere, strict and contemplative patterns of personhood while seeking out the constant pleasure of Allah through meticulous following of the stipulations laid down in the sharia and the Sunna of the Prophet. In the world of the 21st century technologies and phenomena like TV, computers, Internet and constant news updates play a large role in most people’s lives. For Sufis trying to lead lives in zuhd dealing with these issues and confining them their rightful place is increasingly important and is considered crucial for spiritual success on the Sufi path. This presentation focuses on educational discourses and Sufi practices that reflect the inclusion of these and related phenomena in the semantic field of zuhd. For the people I have been working with the concept of zuhd is central to a kind of struggle, in the meaning of mujahidat al-nafs, with the secular-liberal sensibilities, cravings and habits of the nafs related to these phenomena and technologies, and an entire educational discourse and a range of ṭarīqa practices are built up around it. This contemporary discourse on zuhd, zuhd in the age of showbiz, allows them to relate in practice to modern phenomena like TV, Internet, showbiz and the news in ways that link the classical terminology, rationality and spirit of Sufism and their Sufi forebears to contemporary modes of construing and reflecting upon these phenomena.

The paper attempts to disentangle the plurality of conceptual threads and material trajectories that underlie the contemporary uses and understandings of the notions of zahir and batin within a transnational Egyptian-Sudanese brotherhood (the tariqa Burhaniyya Disuqiyya Shadhiliyya), which stands in a twice- subaltern position with respect to both official and Reformist Egyptian Islam. After a long-lasting campaign against its doctrines and practices the Burhani Shaykh (leader) decided to leave Egypt in order to concentrate his efforts on proselytizing for converts in Europe, starting from a group of German Gestalt psychotherapists. Informally reaccepted by the Egyptian Sufi Council 2004 under the name of another Shaykh, the Burhani disciples have rearticulated their cosmology in ‘modern’ terms, embedding Sufi notions with ‘modern’ western psychological notions, in order to respond to the enduring suspicions towards their beliefs and practices. Structured around the dichotomy “ma‘anaui (spiritual)/maddi (material)”, this cosmology relies on a vocabulary, which puts into dialogue notions belonging to the Sufi mystical tradition -such as zahir (manifest reality) and batin (hidden reality)-, with liberal and modern conceptions of private and public dimensions of the Self, as well as with psychological notions of embodiment, linked to Gestalt psychology. Through this complex cosmology, the Burhanis vindicate a particular relation between emotions, senses, body and religious meaning, which blurs the boundaries between representations of ‘Modern’ and ‘Traditional’ Islam dominant in the contemporary Egyptian public sphere. However, the genealogy of this cosmology is one that cannot be explored only on the level of explicit theorizations, just as the uses of its vocabulary are not confined to the level of public discourses. Rather, the process of exchange and of encounter between the different traditions of knowledge described above, happens primarily on the level of the life-worlds of the Burhani disciples, and the notions of zahir and batin infuse the ways in which the disciples make their moral choices and express their existential stakes. The paper thus describes how such Burhani vocabulary of moderness, beyond its discursive level, also reflects a common Burhani grammar of action and experience.