Sufism in Europe

Abstract

Sufism, the spiritual, mystical, and esoteric dimension of Islam, is experiencing a renewal in the 21st century. Charismatic Sufi masters have been able to revitalize their language, attracting new disciples and going beyond their cultural-geographic framework. This book describes the development of Sufism in Western Europe, particularly in France and Italy, through extended empirical research based on participant observation in four Sufi orders. The author illustrates the different forms of hybridization between the Islamic-Sufi tradition and Western esoteric discourses, in particular the Guénonian-Traditionalist and the New Age discourse. These hybridizations often involve the creation of new doctrines, rituals, and organizational structures, and produce different universalist discourses. Which imply different Sufi politics in Europe, such as lack of interest due to an imminent eschatology, civic engagement, and metapolitical elitism. The protean form of contemporary Sufism in Europe makes it difficult to use wide-ranging categories. The category “universal”, often employed by scholars, can be misleading, because it assumes only one form of universalism, whereas there are in fact several forms of universalism, Islamic and non-Islamic. This book, thanks to ethnographic fieldwork, shows the plurality of universalisms present in contemporary Sufism.