Western Sufism

From the Abbasids to the New Age

Mark Sedgwick

Examines the deep roots of Western Sufism, commonly thought to be a relatively recent phenomenon
The first complete history of the Western relationship with Sufism
Presents a portrait of a long-established relationship between Western thought and Islam that is productive and collaborative, rather than discordant

Western Sufism

From the Abbasids to the New Age

Mark Sedgwick

Description

Western Sufism is sometimes dismissed as a relatively recent "new age" phenomenon, but in this book Mark Sedgwick argues that it has deep roots, both in the Muslim world and in the West. In fact, although the first significant Western Sufi organization was not established until 1915, the first Western discussion of Sufism was printed in 1480, and Western interest in Sufi thought goes back to the thirteenth century. Sedgwick starts with the earliest origins of Western Sufism in late antique Neoplatonism and early Arab philosophy, and traces later origins in repeated intercultural transfers from the Muslim world to the West, in the thought of the European Renaissance and Enlightenment, and in the intellectual and religious ferment of the nineteenth century. He then follows the development of organized Sufism in the West from 1915 until 1968, the year in which the first Western Sufi order based on purely Islamic models was founded.

Western Sufism shows the influence of these origins, of thought both familiar and less familiar: Neoplatonic emanationism, perennialism, pantheism, universalism, and esotericism. Western Sufism is the product not of the new age but of Islam, the ancient world, and centuries of Western religious and intellectual history. Using sources from antiquity to the internet, Sedgwick demonstrates that the phenomenon of Western Sufism draws on centuries of intercultural transfers and is part of a long-established relationship between Western thought and Islam.

Western Sufism

From the Abbasids to the New Age

Mark Sedgwick

Introduction

Part I | Premodern Intercultural Transfers
1. Neoplatonism and Emanationism
Plotinus: The Key
Emanation Explained
Neoplatonism Spreads

2. Islamic Emanationism
Arab Neoplatonism
The First Sufis
Sufi Classics

3. Jewish and Christian Emanationism
Jewish Neoplatonism
Jewish Sufism
Latin Emanationism
Conclusion to Part I

Part II | Imagining Sufism, 1480- 1899
4. Dervishes
Angels and Deviants
The View from France
Sufism as Mystical Theology

5. Deism and Pantheism
The prisca theologia in the Renaissance
Universalism: Guillaume Postel and the Jesuits
Deism Demonstrated by Arab and Turk
Pantheism and Anti-Exotericism

6. Universalist Sufism
Sufism as Esoteric Pantheism
Perennialism and Universalism in India
The Dabistan and After

7. Dervishes Epicurean and Fanatical
Dervishes in Drama, Painting, and Verse
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
Fighting Dervishes
Conclusion to Part II

Part III | The Establishment of Sufism in the West, 1910- 1933
8. Transcendentalism, Theosophy, and Sufism
Transcendentalism and the Missouri Platonists
The Theosophical Society and Carl- Henrik Bjerregaard
Ivan Aguéli, the Western Sufi

9. Toward the One: Inayat Khan and the Sufi Movement
Inayat Khan Visits America
The Sufi Message is Spread
The Continuation of the Sufi Movement

10. Tradition and Consciousness
René Guénon and the Traditionalists
George Gurdjieff and Consciousness
The Early Years of John G. Bennett
Conclusion to Part III

Part IV | The Development of Sufism in the New Age
11. Polarization
Toward Islam
Reorientation with Meher Baba
The Travels of John G. Bennett
The Maryamiyya and the Oglala Sioux

12. Idries Shah and Sufi Psychology
Shah and the Gurdjieff Tradition
Shah's Sufism
Followers and Opponents

13. Sufism Meets the New Age
Traditionalism and the New Age
The Sufi Movement Conserved
Sufi Sam in San Francisco
Vilayat and the Sufi Order International
Fazal and Mystical Warfare

14. Islamic Sufism
Ian Dallas and the Darqawiyya
Ibn Arabi and Beshara
The Murabitun and Sufi Jihad
John G. Bennett at Sherborne
Conclusion to Part IV

15. Conclusion

Selected Bibliography
Index

Western Sufism

From the Abbasids to the New Age

Mark Sedgwick

Author Information

Mark Sedgwick is the head of the Islamic Cultures and Societies Research Unit at Aarhus University in Denmark. As a historian, his work centers on the transfer of religions and traditions in the late pre-modern and modern periods.

Western Sufism

From the Abbasids to the New Age

Mark Sedgwick

Reviews and Awards

"Western Sufism stands on its own as a model intellectual history of a significant stream of global spirituality. It is a major contribution to our understanding of the inevitable distortions, compromises, revisions, and entrepreneurism that accompany any attempt at transnational transmission of spiritual traditions from one culture to another."--Phillip Charles Lucas, Nova Religio

"[E]rudite and informative."--Alexander Knysh, American Historical Review

"Topics seemingly familiar to the non-specialist—Sufism as antinomian, pacifist, distinct from or older than Islam—are critically examined in an extensive and diachronic presentation with appreciated nuance and accountability for variation and contradiction: herein lies Sedgwick's great achievement. Instructors may find chapters from these sections appropriate for undergraduates as well, since they pithily and engagingly illustrate the reception of 'Sufism' in epochs and milieus otherwise unexpected."--Reading Religion

"The list of intellectuals who have sneered at twentieth-century Western Sufis as peddling some form of 'neo-Sufism' or 'New Age syncretism' is long and depressing. In his new book, Mark Sedgwick impressively corrects this consensus by giving us the long arc. He traces the Christian and Jewish engagement with Sufism back to the fifteenth-century Renaissance, and then traces the mystical lingua franca of these transcultural transmissions even further back, through Arab and Scholastic philosophy and, finally, to the towering figure of Plotinus. Throughout it all, Sedgwick demonstrates an intellectual and spiritual generosity that is rare among scholars of this erudition and accomplishment. The implications are significant and far-reaching for any number of intellectual projects, from the histories of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism to the re-visioning of comparativism for a new generation." --Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of The Serpent's Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion

"This is the book on Sufism that I always wanted to read, but that I just couldn't find because Mark Sedgwick had not yet written it. Is Sufism Islamic or universal? Is it a historical phenomenon or a product of the imagination? Does it come from the East or the West? Is it one thing or many things? As it turns out, the answer to all these questions is 'both' - and yet there is something that holds it all together: the Platonic dream of reunion with the One True Reality that is hidden and yet made visible by the veil of appearances." --Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Professor of History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents, University of Amsterdam

"This work is both provocative and thought-provoking. Not only is it the first serious study of Sufism in the West but it also provides an argument for both Sufism and Islam as 'Western' spiritual traditions through the shared heritage of Neoplatonism. Besides providing important new material for scholars and students of Sufism, this book is also useful for both graduate and undergraduate courses on Sufism, Orientalism, Esotericism, and Religious Studies and Islamic Studies in general." --Vincent J. Cornell, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Middle East and Islamic Studies, Emory University