|
Pir Vilayat Khan isn't from Pakistan; he's from Europe. His father, Hazrat Inayat Khan, whom Ayesha mentioned, came from Gujarat, India.
Interesting how so much of universalism in comparative religion has been connected to Sufism. This is not a modern trend but goes back to early Islam. There are plenty of examples in, for example, the poetry of Jalal al-Din Rumi.
I'm uncomfortable with the definition of "orthodox" Islam in opposition to and exclusive of Sufism. It might be more accurate to say that "legalistic" Islam is inhospitable to Sufism, but that too would be an oversimplification. Many scholars of Islamic law like Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti were also Sufis. In fact, the one who is considered the greatest Sufi sage of all time, Muhyi al-Din Ibn al-‘Arabi, also wrote works on Islamic law in addition to his major mystical revelations which transformed the Sufi world. After al-Ghazzali's work harmonizing Sufism and Islamic law, the mainstream of Islamic thought for centuries accommodated Sufism to an extent.
The way I see it, traditional Islamic orthodoxy is a big tent that accommodates Sufism (although the more outré formulations of Sufism have always been marginalized). The opposition to Sufism from certain legalistic Muslims has not always defined the mainstream. Especially during the Ottoman Empire, in which the top figures of the Islamic orthodox establishment were almost always Sufis. Much of what fell out in the past 2 or 3 centuries (like Wahhabism and militant fundamentalism), came about as a subversive reaction to overthrow the Ottoman legacy.
Stephen Schwartz's book The Two Faces of Islam praises the Ottoman system for being moderate and tolerant, and condemns Wahhabism for destroying the tolerance of traditional Islam. Schwartz was converted to Islam through exposure to Sufism in Bosnia, where he loved the multireligious culture of Sarajevo that accepted Jews like him, a survival of the Ottoman legacy there. He also saw Wahhabis trying to take over Bosnian Islam and destroy its traditional Sufi-based interreligious harmony. It pains me too that traditional Sufi tolerance has been so eradicated by modern fundamentalist aggression that few people now are even aware it was once the norm.
Frithjof Schuon (1907-1998) was a Sufi from Switzerland who wrote The Transcendent Unity of Religions, drawing on his studies of Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, American Indian religions, and Islam. He showed how the inner, esoteric doctrines of all these religions coalesce into a single unity of meaning, however their outward forms may differ. This book could go a long way toward advancing interreligious understanding and mutual acceptance. Schuon, the French metaphysician René Guénon, the Swiss art historian Titus Burckhardt, and the English art historian Martin Lings are examples of European Sufis who converted to Islam, were initiated in the Shadhiliyah order of Sufism, and devoted their lives to explaining the universal meanings shared by all religions. Their perspective is sometimes called Perennialist, as in Aldous Huxley's book The Perennial Philosophy (although Huxley was not affiliated with them in any way). These gentlemen are good examples of how Sufism continues to promotes religious universality that goes back to Rumi and Ibn al-‘Arabi.
|