Political quietism in the Sufi tradition
Notes[edit]
The ethics of some of Prophet Muhammad's companions, who became paradigms of what can be called an early Sunni isolationism, were later adopted by Muslim ascetical groups, who would be later known as 'Sufis'.[1] However, unlike the early companions, who demarcated reclusion from unislamic practices such as monasticism and cleared it from any suggestion of divisiveness, there were those amongst the Sufis who regarded “ascetic seclusion alone as the means of attaining goodness.” [1] In addition, some of the companions interpreted these prophetic and Qur’anic recommendations figuratively. Al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi (750-869 CE), a Sunni jurist and one of the great early authors of Sufism, discusses a report attributed to the companion and first caliph Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq where the latter defines ‘uzla' or retreat in the bodily sense as a synonym for monasticism. [2] Al-Tirmidhi makes a rhetorical body shunning/heart-shunning dichotomy between Christians and Jews, who shunned the world with their bodies, and Muslims, who shunned the world with their hearts in order to conquer their egos.[2] This resulted in a debate within the Sufi movement about what form asceticism should take, with enlightened Sufis arguing in favour of shunning the world with one’s heart, since morality is to be conceived in a social context and the true saint should be the one who participates in the social and economic life of the society.[1] After the death of Prophet Muhammad and the assassinations of the rightly guided caliphs, Sufis deemed attempts at perfecting this world useless and thus “took the Qur’anic concept of tawakkul (reliance on God) and developed it into political quietism.” [1] This meant that they resigned all their affairs to the will of God in the face of an unjust and corrupt world.
References[edit]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Eltigani Abdulqadir Hamid, et al. “Ethics of Early Muslim Ascetics.” American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, vol. 18, no. 4, 2001, 101.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī, Nawādir al-uṣūl fī maʿrifat aḥādīth al-Rasūl, ed.Tawfīq Takla, 2nd ed., 7 vols.(Damascus: Dār al-Nawādir, 1432/2011)
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