Lexicografía

The Sufism (Arab: rear RTL تصوف) is a movement of spirituality of the Islam, indicated by the word tassawwuf , which is returned by " soufisme" in French. The soufis gather as brotherhoods.

The word Sufism would have been forged starting from the word el-soufiya which designates in Arabic the man who fully carried out his spirituality and which arrived at the end of the Way. All people who follow the way of the " tassawwuf" are not " soufis" but of the " aspirants" with the spiritual way, guided by " soufis" , or of the spiritual Masters.

The Moslems soufis privilege interiorization, the love of God, contemplation, wisdom. Had the appearance of a Notable S, they fight in the name of Islam the defect in all its forms: alcoholic drinks - Vin especially -, Hashish, Prostitution… Their fights was often turned against those which threaten to cant the spirituality of the believers, including emir S licencieux.

At the beginning of Islam, Abû Dharr, for example, a companion of Muhammad, was characterized by its judgment from the powerful ones, which was worth the imprisonment to him.

Probably, the Sufism has dependant part with the Ascétisme Monastique Chrétien, the religion Zoroastrien, even Bouddhiste or Hindou, and the ideas Plato icians. The invisible presence of God in the heart of the believer, is continued through the ascetic experiment and the extatic union (in the physical love in particular) making it possible to reach with the love and the Knowledge of the supreme Creator.

Short approach

The Sufism aims at the proximity with the divine unit, the tawhîd , and it combines with a double polarity: that of the charia and that of Al-haqîqa, the truth. Adhesion in Coran is only one precondition to the comprehension of the world. The rites are useless if one is unaware of the hidden direction. It cultivates readily the mystery, an ideal of austere poverty and interior combat against the defect, the idea being that Mahomet would have received at the same time Coran of the esoteric revelations which it would not have made share with all his companions.

The supreme Being is God of love which one reaches by the Love.

The symbolism of the tree of knowledge represents progress of the meditation and wisdom; and the barrier which separates the man from God is symbolized by the cosmic mountain (Qâf).

Practices

according to jamal.b: The practice of Islam is one of principal pre-necessary tassawwuf ; but so for some, the Sufism consists with " in making plus" that other Moslems, prayers fast, for others " it is located only at the level of the interior orientation and aims neither at adding rites nor with in retrancher" (Ahmad Al Alawi). It is characterized sometimes by ascetic practices aiming at purifying the ego, but the element common to all the soufis without exception it is the dhikr , which one could translate by “recall” or " invocation" , which consists in reminding God in particular by repeating divine names or traditional formulas drawn from Coran, such as the shahâda , the testimony of faith. It is it should be noted that there exist several methods of " dhikr". Another regular practice that one finds in the tassawwuf , it is the recitation, often sung, of poems in spiritual matter, in particular with the praise of the Muhammad Prophet. The purpose of the tassawwuf is to lead to the degree of the excellence of the faith and the behavior ( Al-ihsân ) which, by the purification of the heart, conduit to spiritual sincerity ( ikhlâs ) making it possible to accommodate the divine Light, by which one knows, by which one sees; but little arrives at this goal. That which arrives at the goal - the soufi -, after having carried out the large combat, having stripped of its individuality (ego) - or rather having domesticated it - and delivered of all the partial and illusory visions which are attached there, takes life as a God, and does not act that by Him as He said it: “My Servant does not approach Me by only I like more but the acts than I prescribed to him; then It does not cease approaching Me by supererogatory works until I like it. And when I like it, I am the hearing by which he understands, sight by whom he sees, the hand by which he seizes…” ( Hadith qudsî brought back by Al-Boukharî).

For the soufis themselves, their way is recognized by the four legal schools ( Madhhab ) sunnites, and the four founders are recognized to be themselves of the soufis, with the true direction of the word, i.e. saints and by the Shiites like an expression of the Islamic faith. Ibn Khaldûn and Ghazâlî (Ihya', I, Livre 1, bâb 2, bayân 2) recall for example that “Shâfi `I sat down in front of soufi Shaybân Al-Râ `I, as a child is squatted at the Koranic school, and asked him how it was to make in such and such business. ”

People of the tassawwuf , often criticized by ignorance or desire, wrote throughout the history of the works intended to show the orthodoxy of their practices, quoting in example the generations passed, among which the same character was at the same time a recognized scientist and a follower of the Sufism, and highlighting the traditional sources (verses or hadiths) justifying their practices, like this Koranic verse, one among so much of others: Remain in company of those which, morning and evening, call upon their Lord wishing only his Face.

Here matter of a current spiritual Master: Islam is the religion of the unicity of God, the love and peace. It symbolizes the permanent effort, the ceaseless combat for the excellence of the behavior, and the sincerity of the worship; the Sufism is the heart. It is the way of the knowledge of God, and the serenity of the heart.

The orientalists of the end of and the beginning of the 20th century often wanted to see in the Sufism an attesting current of an influence external with Islam, in particular of Christianity, and inside this one, of the Christian monastic current, giving well involuntarily to the hostile currents with the Sufism of the arguments with load. Work of many islamologists of the 20th century has as a whole rather contributed to refute this thesis. Concerning the monastic life, if the hadith, whose object is in this case the introduction of a behavioral model, is particularly normative in this respect (" no monachism in islam"), the Coran , in a formula of which certain commentators as Ibn Arabi recorded great complexity, while drawing aside it as a practice, underlines the initial positive intention of it: We gave him (in Jesus) the Gospel. We established in the hearts of those which it the leniency, the compassion and the monastic life that founded - We had not prescribed to them - only pushed by the desire to like them God followed. But they did not observe it as they should have done it.

Etymology

What one generally names “etymologies” relating to this word is in fact only phonetic similarities. The first similarity would come from rear Arabic safa or safw RTL صفا clearly; limpid ) which means crystalline purity, another of Ahl Al-Soufa, rear RTL أَهلُالصُّفَّةِ aṣ-ṣuffa, people of the bench ), in reference to those which lived in the Mosque of the Prophet with Médine, and which were mentioned in Coran as “the company of those which call upon their Lord morning and evening wishing His Face” and that one would have indicated by the word Suffiyya. This second similarity is sometimes compared with ahl Al-Saff, (People of the Row), in the direction of “first blessed rank” and elite of the community. The third of these equivalences would be drawn from Al-souf (the wool), owing to the fact that pious people of Koufa are covered with it. As for the fourth, it would derive from souffat Al-kaffa or soft sponge in reference in the middle of the pure and receptive soufi.

The most current assumption is that the word soufi and its derivatives come from the Arab souf meaning wool (صوف, wool ). It is that which Ibn Khaldoun retains. The soufi in general wears a wool clothing as a sign of modesty like the prophet and the poor. Modesty and poverty are evoked in other names given to some of them: Dervish (Farsi: RTL F درويش, beggar ) or to fakir (Arab: rear فقير, poor RTL).

Some pointed out that separately the first derivation, all the others are incorrect from the point of view of Arab grammar (for example, attribution with safâ says safawiy and not soufi ).

In accordance with the Arab language whose letters correspond to numbers, the true direction of the word can be given only by “the addition of the numerical values of the letters of which it is formed”. The sheikh Rene Guénon (Abdel Wahid Yahya) delivers the result to us: “the word soufi has the same number as El-Hekmah el-ilahiyah, i.e. “divine Wisdom”; the true soufi is thus that which has this wisdom, or, in other words, it is el-ârif bi' llah, i.e. “that which knows by God” (Islamic Esotérime and Taoism, Rene Guenon, p. 21.)

In any rigor, the term soufi designates an individual arrived at the total spiritual realization, and not a candidate with such an interior realization, which should be called moutaçawwif (مُتَصَوِّف). But in practice, the Masters themselves employ the " term; soufis" in a way much more total and indistinct, in accordance with a general principle which the hadith expresses well according to: " That which resembles people is leurs."

History

The soufis were organized in brotherhoods ( turuq , plural of '' tarîqa ''; way, way) rested by spiritual Masters ( chaykh ) who were often but not always descendants of the Muhammad prophet by his cousin Ali and his/her daughter Fâtima. Each soufi is attached to a “chain” ( silsilah ) which represents its spiritual genealogy, thanks to which it is connected by various intermediaries to the Prophet. Except for some exceptions (like certain ways naqshbandies), all the spiritual ways go back to the Prophet via Ali ibn Abi Talib. The spiritual exercise that the soufis privilege is the Dhikr (recollection, memory); it is about a practice consisting in evoking Allah (God) by repeating Its name in a rythmée way and while remaining centered on Its thought. The dikhr is regarded as a transformer practice of the heart, because it is judged that the name of Allah has a kind of theurgic value which acts on the heart.

So for the soufis, it is the Muhammad Prophet who is the first of them, the History finds trace of the first groups of soufis only with Koufa and Al Basra as from the 8th century of the Christian era, then with Baghdad at the 9th century. The 12th century and 13th century mark for the Sufism the passage to a structuring and an organization much more formal: they is what is called the brotherhoods ( turuq , plural of tarîqa ). This formal and thus to some extent social organization does not want obviously to say only the nature of the Sufism, which is a spiritual way (original direction of the word tarîqa ), is basically transformed. But this evolution results in a larger visibility and an impact historically measurable of the Sufism on the Moslem companies. This impact is particularly obvious in certain cases where the Sufism represents with him only the expression of the Islamic religion: the examples of Islamization of West Africa de l' by Tidjaniyya and Qâdiriyya, or of resistance carried out against the Russians to the 19th century and 20th century by a Muslim population mainly attached to Naqshbandiyya show it abundantly. This socio-policy influence of certain sectors of the Sufism is seen especially in the areas tardily converted with the Islam: in Central Asia, India, where it was one of the spearheads of Islamization, and in the Turkish world . It is thus obvious that the concept of Sufism recovers very variable realities: some are purely spiritual and metaphysics while others represent the consequences of the implication of the Masters soufis and their disciples in the politico-social field. The Confréries soufies were persecuted by certain judged authorities of the Sunnisme because hétérodoxes by certain doctors of the Moslem law and because allied to the Chiisme. Today still, certain currents salafî or wahhabî , which claims to represent orthodoxe Islam, seek to decrease the influence of the brotherhoods soufies in the world, the Sufism being regarded as an instrument to leave the framework of a form of strict and literal orthodoxy and, especially, like a superstitious and, sometimes, pagan drift. In Persia the dynasty of the Séfévides resulted from a dynasty soufie.

Doctrines

From the point of view of the ideas, the Sufism is current a esoteric which professes doctrines affirming that any reality comprises an apparent appearance (exoteric or Zahir ) and a hidden interior aspect (esoteric or Batin ). It is characterized by the search for a spiritual state which gives access this hidden knowledge. This importance attached to the secrecies even carried out until the invention of the artificial languages by the brotherhoods, whose most important example is the Baleybelen.

The first phase is thus that of the rejection of the usual conscience, that of the five directions, by the search for a state d'" ivresse" spiritual, sometimes comparable wrongly with a kind of Extase; the soufis themselves speak rather about “extinction” ( Al-fana' ), i.e. the annihilation of the ego to arrive at the conscience of the presence of the action of God in oneself: The individual me must be sacrificed to leave room to the Spirit, spark divine in the man:

It formed it harmoniously then insufflated to him of Its spirit.
Coran (XXXII; 9)
This first stage carried out, the soufi must return to the outside world which it had initially rejected; the lexicon of the soufis indicates this phase by various terms which correspond to as many aspects of this second voyage: Al-baqâ , the " subsistence or the permanence" , clearness ( sahw ), the return ( rujû ) towards the creatures. This summary description is inevitably very diagrammatic: like the literature soufie shows it, this process is much more cyclic than linear, and the interpretation of the terms of the lexicon soufi is by esoteric nature. Like says it the Algerian Master soufi Ahmad Al Alawi: " That once one employed these expressions, whereas people are unaware of what the People understand by there! Soufis speak about union and of distinction, without the others not knowing what it turns over, which are the union and the realization ( tahqîq ), otherwise than theoretically and by faith. All that they can affirm on this subject depends on their capacity to imagine, by conceptual constructions ( wahm ), it to what these expressions refer, since it is impossible to know it as long as Dieu." was not joined; For example, another way of presenting the same process, starting from the Koranic terminology, consists in describing various degrees of spiritual realization. The Masters soufis distinguish three phases in the rise in the heart towards knowledge in God: initially the heart controlled by its passions. The applicant with the initiation, which is regarded as being at this stage, is called mourîd (مُريد, beginner; new follower; disciple ). Then the degree comes from the heart which blames itself, i.e. which seeks to be corrected internally, the initiate who arrives at this stage is called salîk (Farsi: سالك, traveller ) itinerant, allusion to the symbolic system “travels interior”. Then the third and last level are that of the alleviated heart, reinstated in the Spirit.

Organization of the brotherhoods

Each Master of the Sufism ( shaykh ) surrounds himself by a group of disciples and animates a brotherhood, founded by a large Master of the last centuries. He has a method for the accession with the divine unit, and no one cannot call into question the validity of its teaching since he refers to Islam. The Masters of the Sufism gave the example of a religious life which does not need to stick to the official forms of the worship, thus avoiding the bursting of Islam sunnite between the various legal schools. The rise towards God passes by the exercises practiced in the brotherhoods: days before ( sahar ), fasts ( siyâm ), dances (dervishes, turners), litanies ( dhikr , literally, “recall” of the name of God), respiratory control; but this individualistic movement was condemned by this traditional Islam ( wahhabism ), involving the setting with died of Al-Hallâdj in 922.

Principal figures of the Sufism

Among the great figures of the Sufism, one can quote, the Iraq IEN Muhasibi (781-837), the Egyptian Dhû Al-Nûn, died into 861, the Iran IEN Abû Yazîd Al-Bistâmî and finally one of most famous, Ibn Al “Arabî (1165 in Spain -1240 with Damas), at side of which Abd el-Kader wanted to be buried. Its method “science and the balance”, makes it possible to measure spiritual energy immanente of a being. Historically, the Sufism largely influenced dissidences Shiite, the such ismailism or the Druzes. It is also thought that it influenced Thousand and One Nights and the poem of love of Laylâ Wa Al-Majnûn, an equivalent of Romeo and Juliette .

Here a list of the principal figures of the Sufism:

Martyrs

  • Ibn Mansour Al Halladj, soufi of Baghdad, was crucifié into 922.
  • A' D od-DIN Mahmoud Chabestari, burned on one to rough-hew
  • Abdessalam Ibn Machich Al-Alami, assassinated.
  • Baba ould Cheikhna Ahamada Hamahoullah
  • Sheik Sid Mouhamed ould Cheikhna
So some think that “practically all the martyrs soufis found death with the hands of religious fanatic authorities or legalists literal, all convinced to be right and to represent Islam officially” (Federico Gonzalez), others point out that, in particular in the case of Al-Hallâj, it is the fact of revealing the esoteric truths which was the cause of its execution (cf in particular the comment of the Râ' iyya of Shârishî, which quotes Ibn Khaldûn on this subject).

Critical of the Sufism

  • Ibn Al-Jawzî (12th century) devotes certainly a small portion of its book Talbîs Iblîs to the critic of the Sufism of its time, but among good of others target like the philosophers, the theologists of the kalam, certain scientists of hadiths, the lawyers, the preachers, the philologists, the poets. The Talbîs Iblîs , often quoted as the prototype of the critic of the Sufism is actually only one critical very general of all the doctrines and practices that Ibn Al-Jawzi regarded wrongly or rightly as unjustified innovations. It also brings back the remarks of the hanbalite Ibn 'Aqîl which were also very opposite with the Sufism, in particular with the drifts hétérodoxes and with the exaggerations.

  • Ibn Taymiyyah and its pupil Ibn Al-Qayyim (14th century) denounced several drifts of the Sufism, but they had not only regard for some soufis which they considered in conformity with orthodoxy, such as Al Junayd, but several sources attest that they were them-even attached to the sheik soufi 'Abd Al-Qâdir Al-Jîlânî (cf in particular, of the scientist Yûsuf Ibn “Abd Al-Hâdî (Mr. 909H), the work entitled Bad” Al 'ûla Bi labs Al-khirqa ).

  • the rationalist school and reformist of the Egyptian Muhammad Abduh and his Syrian pupil Mohammed Rachid Rida (fine - beginning of the 20th century) was opposed radically to the Sufism, considered as one of the main reasons of the decline of the Moslems, by his supposed encouragement of fatalism and inertia, and by the superstitions and the myths which it is supposed to have introduced. On the other hand, it is well-known that the founder of the movement of the " Musulmans" brothers; , Hassan Al-Banâ was attached to the Sufism.

  • the contemporary salafis reject the Sufism hétérodoxe regarding it an innovation in the religion ( bid' ah ) and as a superstition.

  • the charge of Pantheism concerning the doctrines of ( wahdat ul-wujûd ) or of hulûl (incarnation of divine in the creatures) with regard to some soufis as Al-Hallâj which had words such as: " In the djubbah I carry, it has only Dieu" there;. But writings of certain Masters soufis as the emir AbdelKader give an explanation which challenges this charge

  • a defect of monotheism because of the worship of the saints and the belief in the aqtâb which are supposed to have a role in the management of the universe.

  • adoption of acts of worships which would not be attested by authentic Hadith S.

  • song and dance like religious practice. Said Ibn Al-Qayyim, in a poem, in this respect:

" When the Book (Coran) was recited to them, they lowered the head, not by fear God,

But it is the attitude of inattentive negligent.

And when the song came, they are reflected with braire like asses.

By Allah, they did not dance for Him.

a tambourine, a flute and the melody of an fawn…

did you ever see a worship by entertainment? "

  • exaggeration in the asceticism. It is brought back, for example, which some soufis ate only one date every forty days. This criticism rests on a hadith reported in Sahîh Al-Bukhâriy and Sahîh Muslim , it is known as that three men came to get information about the religious practice of the Prophet. One of them said: " Me, I request all the nuit" , second said: " Me, I fast during all my vie" and third said: " Me, I do not approach the women, and I will not marry jamais". The Prophet came to see them and their said: " It is you who said such and such thing? By Allah, I fear Allah and I venerate it more than you, but I fast sometimes and I eat other times, harms I request and I sleep, and I Marie with women. And that which does not appreciate my way, cannot be prevailed of moi".

  • exaggerated practices of unquestionable sects, like rolling themselves on embers, swallowing snakes, to whip themselves until blood, etc

Obviously, for thesame ones, there is not only one of the charges carried in their opposition which is serious, concerning the authentic Sufism, even if they often recognize that there are indeed condemnable deviations. Throughout the history, many scientists endeavoured to answer these criticisms (which are always the same ones, each critic plagiarizing his predecessors), such as for example the large Suyûtî scientist (in particular concerning the use of the rosary, whom the opponents with the Sufism denounce like an innovation of Christian origin). Among the most recent works which present in detail at the same time criticisms and their refutation, one can quote the Qawl Al-ma' rûf of Algerian Ahmad Al Alawi (Mr. 1934), translated into French under the title " Open letter with that which criticizes the soufisme".

This permanent between soufis and anti-soufis confrontation continues nowadays and even in an accentuated way, because it is about an old and permanent conflict inside even of the religious mediums of the Islam, but which was in the past limited to a " conflict of experts". Modern means of communication obviously giving the possibility to all of expressing itself, and certain notions of the Sufism being by nature inaccessible to the " reason which tranche" , raising only of the field of " the intuition spirituelle" (it is the characteristic even of doctrines " ésotérique"), confusion, the conflict and the same sempiternal discussions can be only increasing.

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