Seyyed Hossein Nasr Quotes About Sufism
-
From it genesis twelve hundred years ago to today, Islamic philosophy (al-hikmah; al-falsafah) has been one of the major intellectual traditions within the Islamic world, and it has influenced and been influenced by many other intellectual perspectives, including Scholastic theology (kalam) and doctrinal Sufism (al-ma'rifah or al-tasawwuf al-'ilmi) and theoretical gnosis ('irfan-i nazari).
→ -
Look at Senegal, about 90% of the Muslims in Senegal are Tijani or Qadiri Sufis. Among them, they have very great teachers who have written poems about al-Hallaj, and they have not been killed. In fact, it's Sufism that brought Islam through all of Senegal, right under our noses the last couple of centuries. And you can go down the same line through Indonesia and Malaysia.
→ -
People who were also traders were also men of Sufism, as we see around Java, people who were outwardly trading but were also men of very high spiritual character. Otherwise no trader would be able to convert a person from one religion to another. It was because they were men of spiritual character.
→ -
There is no religion in the world where there is a possibility of spiritual development outside of the context of that religion. This is only a modern invention. For example, Christian mystics were also Christians. They also went to Church and followed Christian laws. Hindu mystics were practicing Hindus; they didn't kill cows and have steak. They follow the Hindu laws and so on and so forth down the line and Sufism is no exception.
→ -
Without Sufism, Islam would not have spread into two thirds of what we call the Islamic world.
→ -
Sufism has always had the function of purifying Islamic ethics and that fasting and tazkiya is like lighting a lamp.
→
Related Authors
-
Huston Smith Professor -
Ananda Coomaraswamy Philosopher -
Farah Diba Empress of Iran -
-
Henry Corbin Philosopher -
Rene Guenon Author -
Wolfgang Smith Mathematician -
Titus Burckhardt Author -
Al-Farabi Philosopher -
Frithjof Schuon Author -
Hamza Yusuf Scholar -
Martin Lings Writer -
Hamid Dabashi Professor -
Abdolkarim Soroush Critic -
Ali Shariati Revolutionary -
Ibn Arabi Philosopher -
Rumi Poet -
Muhammad Asad Journalist -
Vali Nasr Academic -
Avicenna Philosopher