The Critique of Ghuluwwat al-Tasawwuf: From Medieval Reform to the “Other” of Islamic Modernity
At the very end of his critical analysis of the relationship between Islam and the Black community in the United States, Sherman Jackson reflects on the Sufi tradition as a key to liberation. In his critical embrace of Sufism, he writes,
“Blackamerican Muslims should avail themselves of the best from the entire tradition of Sufism… Even here, however, the goal should be the concepts, emphasis, and accumulated wisdom of learned Sufism, not the institutional structures, romantic exaggerations, or fossilized liturgical practices. Especially to be avoided, moreover, are the religiously fraudulent excesses and escapades of the Muslim world’s popular Sufism along with Modern Islam’s often blind and virulent prejudices against Sufism in all its forms.”
Jackson’s complex, measured evaluation of the potential of Sufism in contemporary African American communities comes with a set of warnings. He cautions against the “blind and virulent prejudices against Sufism” of what he calls “Modern Islam.” In this case, “Modern Islam” seems to be a metonym for the Salafiyya, the 20th century modernist-purist movement that scathingly critiques the Sufi tradition. Though Jackson warns against a blind embrace of the Salafi critique, his own acceptance of Sufism internalizes many of these very same critiques: he maintains a distance from “romantic exaggerations,” “fossilized liturgical practices,” and “fraudulent excesses.”
As it developed in the 20th century, the Salafi critique espoused a language of modern revivalism and absolutist universalism in the Islamic tradition. While its advocates present the Salafiyya as a pristine Islamic practice of the “pious forefathers,” a closer inspection of its history reveals the complex circumstances that gave rise to it. The notion of “salaf” first appears in medieval Hanbali texts as a critique of Ash’ari theology. However, the 20th century Salafiyya anachronistically appropriate this notion of “salaf” as a primordial takedown of Sufi “innovations.” The medieval Hanbali theologians, namely Ibn al-Jawzi, Ibn Taymiyyah, and Ibn Qayyim, condoned and practiced Sufism, even as they critiqued their Sufi contemporaries. On the other hand, as the Salafi critique in both its modernist and purist variations developed in the 20th century as a response to colonialism, its advocates rejected the domain of Sufism as both an aberration from Islamic “orthodoxy,” as well as a backwards “irrational” practice incompatible with modernity.
Prior to the emergence of the Salafi critics in the 20th century, the term “salaf” implied the Hanbali position on the theological question of God’s attributes. In the medieval writings of Ibn Taymiyyah, he often made such references to the “doctrine of the forefathers,” or madhab al-salaf. However, Ibn Taymiyyah’s referential treatment of the “salaf” particularly invoked the Hanbali position on God’s attributes, which criticized the Ash’ari theologians of anthropomorphism. The founder of the Hanbali school, Ahmad Ibn Hanbal, also took issue with the Mu'tazilite doctrine of the createdness of the Qur’an, which he deemed to be a rationalistic product of kalam at the expense of the Qur’an and Sunnah. Echoing Ibn Hanbal, Ibn Taymiyyah’s position invoked “the creed of the pious ancestors” specifically as a theological model. Contrary to the claims of contemporary Salafiyya, this use of “salaf” did not imply a jurisprudential or legal position in the same way it did later in the 20th century, let alone a coherent movement that strongly disdained upon Sufi practice.
To be sure, Ibn Taymiyyah, his foremost pupil Ibn Qayyim, and his Hanbali predecessor Ibn Al-Jawzi all critiqued many of their Sufi contemporaries—yet, they themselves did not dismiss the mystical realm entirely and maintained memberships in Sufi tariqas. Ibn Al-Jawzi aimed his ire at “excessive” Sufis who disregarded the shari’ah, indulged in wealth and opulence, and maintained good connections with worldly leaders. In his view, the Sufism of the earliest Islamic ascetic-mystics has been abandoned in favor of a corrupted tradition. Similarly, Ibn Taymiyyah took issue with what he deemed metaphysical innovations of Ibn Arabi, not Sufism altogether as a realm of mystical experience. His critique, much like Ibn al-Jawzi’s, did not seek to eradicate Sufism so much as to reconcile it with shari’ah and Hanbali jurisprudential precepts. Alongside them is Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya, who critiqued the Sufi practices of saint veneration and visitation, which he saw as excess (ghuluww). Nevertheless, considering the ubiquity of Sufism in the social life of the medieval Islamic world, none of these “proto-Salafi” figures held the same disdain towards Sufi practice as their self-proclaimed descendants in the 20th century. In fact, they can be better understood as both jurists and Sufis at once, reconciling between these strands of the Islamic tradition.
However, much later in 18th century Arabia, Muhammad Ibn Abdul-Wahhab yielded these medieval Hanbali criticisms to develop his own radical notion of tawhid, in a movement that led to the founding of the Saudi state. Ibn Abdul-Wahhab emerged from the town of Huraymila’ in Najd, located near the center of the Arabian peninsula. His teachings rebelled against the dominant Hanafi scholars of Najd, whom he claimed had become guilty of an uncritical taqlid, or blind imitation of a jurisprudential school. Against the Hanbali establishment, Ibn Abdul-Wahhab asserted that most of the Muslim world fell into a state of unbelief by falling short of his ideal of tawhid. His teachings found a strategically fruitful ally in Muhammad Ibn Saud, who fought to establish what is now known as the first Saudi state. Ibn Abdul-Wahhab took particular issue with Shi’ite Islam and sacked the sanctuary of Karbala’. Sufis were also the target of Ibn Abdulwahhab’s attacks—he directed a great deal of vitriol towards the veneration of saints, visiting the grave of the prophet, and dominant Hajj practices such as pilgrimage caravans where music was played. He considered all of these popular practices to have been nothing less than shirk, making his views rather unpopular in the broader 18th century Muslim world.
Nevertheless, the Wahhabiyya themselves cannot be said to have been Salafis—not only did they themselves use the term “Salaf” in much the same way that earlier Hanbali scholars did, but they also did not dismiss the mystical realm altogether. Despite their controversial standing with the Hanbali establishment, the Wahhabiya similarly spoke of the “creed of the pious ancestors” as a reference to affirming God’s attributes and “avoiding the errors of the Ash’aris.” Ibn Abdul-Wahhab surely frowned upon the innovations (bid’a) of Sufis. Yet, he himself also endorsed al-tarika al-sufiyya insofar as it implies inner purification from sin in accordance with shari’ah. In that way, Ibn Abdul Wahhab’s views follow suit with his Hanbali predecessors, despite how controversial his teachings proved to be. Though he had an especially hardline approach to what he defined as an “innovation” that alienated many Sufis, Ibn Abdul Wahhab himself did not quite represent an early instance of what later became the Salafi tradition.
“Salafism” as an analytical category typically refers to the first liberal Islamic reformists appearing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: Muhammad Abduh and his pupil, Rashid Rida. Emerging from Al-Azhar during British colonialism of Egypt, Abduh endeavored to synthesize an Islamic modernism with the principal aim of reform (islah). He saw European achievements, along with their strong colonial reaches, as a direct result of the rational premises of Enlightenment thought. From his position as a colonized subject, Abduh illustrated an Islamic alternative to European advancements that promoted reason, though not at the expense of scripture. With the advent of the printing press, Abduh’s pupil Rashid Rida established the periodical Al-Manar, where he spread the main views that came to be characterized as “Salafi.” A cursory examination of “Salafism” would suggest that Abduh spearheaded a “Salafi movement” that his student Rida would later elaborate on more fully.
However, the term’s application to Abduh and his contemporaries owes its existence to an Orientalist misnomer—European scholars who did not know how to classify these figures used the word “Salafism” in a way that these early reformists never quite did. As a matter of fact, Abduh never referred to himself as a Salafi, maintaining that the Salafis were theologians who simply disagreed with the Ash’aris on the question of God’s attributes. He did not include himself or his brand or reformism within that group, although his student Rida would later attempt to do so when Abduh’s Salafi credentials came under doubt. The mischaracterization of early Islamic reformism as “Salafism” emerges as a result of a confused Western scholarship uncertain how to classify these reformists. Massignon first introduced the term to describe the “rationalist-cum-scripturalist movement” of Abduh, which he felt was somewhere between Wahhabism and Mu'tazili theology. The term became popularized through Stoddard and Laoust, who inherited Massignon’s misreading of how Abduh and others understood and spoke of the word “salaf.”
“Salafism” as a coherent movement and ideology begins to take form in the aftermath of Rashid Rida’s reconciliation with the Wahhabiyya in Saudi Arabia, which began an era of Saudi prominence and power. After European mandates established themselves throughout the Middle East, Rashid Rida took great issue with Arab elites who overtly allied themselves with the British, most notably Sharif Husayn of the Hejaz. As a result, he instead chose to ally himself with Sharif Husayn’s enemy: Abdulaziz Ibn Saud of Najd, the founder of the modern Saudi state. Although Rida recognized the Wahhabi creed of Ibn Saud retained its unpopularity throughout the Muslim world, he felt it would be a politically pragmatic and intellectually expedient alliance. Rida ultimately desired to unite the ummah against Western colonialism, making his reconciliation with the Wahhabiyya a major step in that direction.
After the alliance between Wahhabi purists and liberal reformists in the 1920s, a Salafi “movement” began to take form as a distinct legal position: the rejection of madhab schools of law in order to bring greater Muslim unity in the face of colonialism. In 1924, Rashid Rida proclaimed himself a Salafi, explaining the word to imply not following any particular jurisprudential school, and resorting strictly to scriptural proofs on debatable legal issues. As it grew in the 1930s, the emergent madhab al salaf began to imply religious standardization, unified Islamic nationalism, and a constructed orthodoxy. Additionally, the works written by European scholars Massignon, Laoust and Stoddard became translated into Arabic and widely popularized the Salafiyya as a unique, unified phenomenon. As such, the word “salaf” underwent a transmutation in the 1920s: from simply implying the Hanbali theological approach to interpreting God’s attributes, to a movement encompassing legalistic claims to orthodoxy and orthopraxy.
Despite this implied unity amongst the Salafiyya, the modernist and purist strands of Salafism often fell into disputes regarding religious credentials of the former, and the “backwardness” of the latter. The “modernist” strand emphasized the importance of reason (aql) as a means of promoting progress in the Muslim world against Ottoman stagnancy. On the other hand, the “purist” orientation akin to Saudi Wahhabism emphasized a disdain towards all innovation, a commitment to textual literalism, and a revivalism of a pristine Islam of the prophetic epoch. The adherents of these two camps maintained an alliance, insofar as they saw their goals of ending Western colonialism as mutual. Some, like Rida, comfortably straddled the lines between “purism” and “modernism.” However, members of both camps often directed criticism at one another, either for a perceived “backwardness” or due to susceptibility to innovation. Evidently, the alliance between these two strands could hardly be described as sustainable.
Nevertheless, as the fragile alliance between modernist and purist Salafis developed, Sufism became the quintessential “Other” to the Salafiyya as a whole: the modernist view of Sufism as “irrational and backwards” coincided with the Wahhabi critique of Sufi practices as bid’ah. Both camps revisited the medieval critiques of Sufism by Ibn al-Jawzi, Ibn Taymiyyah, and Ibn al-Qayyim in order to maintain Sufism as an aberration from shari’ah and a barrier to their project of orthodoxy and orthopraxy. However, Salafis gave these medieval critiques a modernist spin: Sufi “superstitions” were too backwards and irrational, even paganistic, and did not belong in 20th century Islam. Sometimes they went even further, blaming Sufi backwardness for European colonial advancement and Islamic “decline.” They reserved an especially strong hatred for tomb visiting practices, which they claimed put Islam to shame in comparison to the enlightened European Christians and Jews. Though some of these claims can be traced back to medieval theologians and jurists, the Salafiyya surely did not share the same aims as Ibn al Jawzi and company. Rather than constructively critique and reconcile their Sufi contemporaries with Hanbali legalism, the Salafiyya wanted to achieve their goal of anti-colonial Islamic unity, and they felt that Sufi tariqas and practices simply stood in the way of that goal.
By internalizing a linear teleology in their criticism of Sufism, the Salafiyya ironically shared an important disposition with the secular Europe they attempted to define themselves against—namely, a project of redemption from a “backwards” Islam. In his Formations of the Secular, anthropologist Talal Asad identifies characteristics of an “anthropology of secularism.” He maintains “the secular” as a set of modernist projects that seek to create a new human subjectivity, one that is redeemed from an “irrational” world order. This narrative of redemption arose from European encounters with non-European “pagan” traditions, which engendered a new vocabulary. “Superstition,” “fetish,” and “taboo,” appeared as categories of illusion and oppression that the “human” ought to be liberated from through profanation, which could only be achieved via reason. The Salafi critique of Sufism shares many features of this redemptive story, including Salafi comparisons of the “excesses” of Sufism with pagan traditions. In the project of anti-colonial Islamic nationalism, there could be no room for mystical expressions that were deemed inimical to modernity. On a linear timeline, Sufism belonged firmly in premodern times, siphoned away from the Salafi project of redeeming Islam in modernity.
Nevertheless, in spite of their mutual disdain for Sufism, the modernist and purist strands of Salafism diverged after decolonization, marking Saudi Arabia as a commercial and intellectual beacon for the purist group that came to define a bona fide hegemonic Salafism. After achieving independence from European empires in the 1940s, Salafi “purists” had far less incentive to maintain a flexible attitude towards their modernist peers. They maintained a much more rigorous, exclusionary definition of Salafism, unwilling to compromise on even minor doctrinal disagreements. At the same time, Saudi Arabia grew in economic and geopolitical prominence due to the discovery of oil and strong economic ties with the United States. It became increasingly attractive for many of the most purist Salafi scholars to migrate to Saudi Arabia, where they can not only earn respect and a popular platform, but also a steady job at many of the burgeoning seminaries and institutes. Some of these scholars elected to stay in Saudi Arabia, while others made their way back to their nation-states to spread an increasingly Wahhabi Salafism. In addition, Salafism became attractive as an “authentic Islam” among Western youth, compensating for their upbringing away from the Muslim world. The geopolitical and economic prominence of Saudi Arabia corresponded with its growing ideological hegemony over Salafism, especially as the 20th century progressed and more Salafi scholars became disenchanted with post-independence Arab regimes. The resulting ideological make-up of Salafism by the 1980s and 1990s became the most embittered and dogmatically hostile towards the Sufi tradition.
In the face of staunch Salafi criticism of Sufism as popular, embodied practices with their regional variations, Sufis had to emphasize their Islamic “orthodoxy.” Sometimes this process entailed an internalization of the Salafi critique, a stripping away of the more mystical elements of Sufism and adhering more strongly to a paradigm of individualized piety via the adherence to shari’a. At other points, Sufis attached themselves to nation-state popular piety projects and stripped away or renamed the tariqa structure, resulting in projects such as the Qubaysiyyat in Syria and the Gülen movement in Turkey. These transmutations of Sufism in the 20th century ensured the survival of Islamic ascetic-mysticism against the Salafi critique, though Sufi institutions, shrines, practices, and teachers remained under the tutelage of the nation-state governing body. In some cases, such as in Pakistan, the state cared for the welfare of important sites of Sufi piety in the public sphere, ensuring their position as sites of national heritage. In other cases, however, such as in Saudi Arabia, Sufi thinkers and practitioners faced antagonism from the state, forcing them into the underground.
The most accurate understanding of the Salafi critique of Sufism should be attuned to its constructive make-up, rather than take for granted its own narrative as originating in medieval Hanbali scholarship. From medieval times to the postcolonial epoch, the word “salaf” transformed from a word that specifically implied a theological position on God’s attributes, to an all-encompassing, legalistically constructed Islamic orthodoxy at the exclusion of the Sufi tradition. Though the Salafiyya encompassed two distinct trends of Islamic thought, a modernist strand and a purist strand, they shared a mutual disdain for Sufism as an aberration from orthodoxy and as a backwards, anti-modern tradition. What these two strands share is their implication in a modern, if not modernist, project of nation-building after the colonial encounter. Nevertheless, the more “purist” variation of Salafism came to be hegemonic after the geopolitical growth of Saudi Arabia, resulting in the enshrinement of Sufism as an “other” to Islam in modernity. As such, contemporary Sufis (or Sufi apologists) had to either internalize the Salafi critique, or respond to it.
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