Sufism

Sufism, a form of mysticism within Islam. The Koran is unfavourable to mysticism, for it tells of a God perfectly distinct from the world and from the souls of men, who has decreed from all eternity the lot of every person, and who is to be pleased with outward rites and conduct. Sufic mysticism has come into Islam through Persia, where, under the influence of Indian Buddhism, its pantheistic ideas existed before the Mohammedan conquest. Sufis claim as their founder the woman Râbia, whose grave on a hill east from Jerusalem drew many pilgrims in the middle ages. But that distinction rather belongs to Abû Saïd ibn Abî-l-Chair, a Persian of Khorassan, who, notwithstanding the saying of Mohammed that there is no monkeny in Islam, founded a monastery about 815. His followers were called Sufis or Woollers from their ascetic garb. A contemplative life soon naturally sought in Pantheism that rest for the heart which it could not find in the distant, unsym- pathetic God of Islam. Thereafter Sufism divided itself. Some with the Persian Bestâmî, who died in 875, professed openly that man is God. Others with Jonaid, who died in 909, a Persian too, though born in Bagdad, were of like faith, but cautious and orthodox in their language. The favourite watchword of Islam, the Unity of God, meant with them that God is all. The object of all Sufism was to deliver the soul from the sway of the passions by destroying human nature and the power of the flesh, and so to make the soul merely spiritual, uniting it by love with God, from whom it had emanated as a ray emanates from the sun. Cautious Sûfis were often revered as saints, while sometimes the incautious became martyrs. Many, like Jonaid's pupil Hallâj, who was executed by Hâmid, the vizier of the calif Al-Môqtadir at Bagdad in 922, were alternately adored and persecuted. In Sufism the devotee must choose a teacher, and strive toward development through degrees, of which there are commonly reckoned three. First is the Law, wherein the Sûfi is merely a Muslim, blameless in all ordinances of morality and of Islam; but the only motive to worship or obedience is not fear of punishment nor hope of reward, but love. Second is the Way or Method, wherein he practises asceticism, fasts, watches in silence and solitude, studies Sufistic lore, drives away other thought, rises into an occasional ecstatic state, Hâl, which when permanent is called a position, Makâm. Positive religion, needful for the weak, is now needless for him. The final degree is Certainty; the transcendental objective God has now become subjective; the Sûfi is now consciously God; all religion is vain. The first great Sûfi poet was the Persian Ferîd eddîn Attar, who died c. 1220. The greatest Sûfi poet was another Persian, Jelâl eddîn Rûmî (1207-73). But Sufism, the dream of the least and the most cultured alike, has been the religion of Hâfiz and Sâdi and of nearly all the great Persian poets. Their luscious language of love and beauty's charms, of intoxication and the wine-house, is strongly sensual or spiritual according as it is taken. Of the Safides, who reigned over Persia from 1499 to 1736, the first was Ismael the Sûfi. In 1777 a famous Sûfi, Mir Maçûm Ali Shah, came from India to Shirâz, and raised a great Sûfi fervour, against which a very severe persecution was started by church and state in 1782, and lasted many years. Yet the influence of Sufism in Persia and eastward is rather increasing than waning; and in all orthodox lands this most fatal dissolvent of Islam is welcomed. There are many sects in Sufism. In Persia when the 19th century began there were at least a quarter of a million of Sûfis. There are more now; but with the majority the name means not pantheist but freethinker. In this sense the Sûfis or Wise may include half of the Persian middle class.