Dhikr: The Contemplative Life in the Sufi Tradition

Abstract

In recent years, modern rationalists and religious extremists have attacked Islam’s esoteric Sufism, dismissing it as irrational or heretical. While Salafi groups aim to impose a strict legalism on Islam’s inner dimensions, the influence of modernity has also led many to abandon a cosmological view of existence. Amid a turbulent environment, Sufis persist in fostering an “anthropocosmic” self-image through intense contemplative practices like dhikr. Commonly referred to as the “remembrance” of God, dhikr is performed in various ways, involving the invocation of God’s name as a technique of disclosing a God-like ethos in one’s being. I argue that Sufis employ contemplation as a means to fuse the cosmic and the material into a singular experience of being.