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Sufism has evolved from time to time and from society to another by presenting itself in various forms and ways. By virtue of its tenets, Sufism has influenced many societies and different cultures. Sufis have played a significant role in their respective societies as religious mentors or else as political advisors. Many of them have otherwise stood in opposition to the political authority and proposed a better way of running the society. Across history, Sufism has shown itself as a dynamic and innovative social and religious force. In the final analysis, Sufism cannot be ignored as the major contributor to the structure of Islamic civilization. In the meantime, the social and religious malaises that we witness in modern time have called Sufism into play. Modernism has produced an unbalanced life, triggering the absolutistic way of life where a man is aware only of his physical dimension and ignoring his spiritual inner being. Here, Sufism can play its important role. The modern intellectual paradigm that puts more emphasis on empiricism and rationalism and produces as a result the positivistic mode of thinking has paved the way for Sufism to occur and recur as the dominant player in the domain of man-personality building. This paper is concerned with this issue and other related problems. Putting in mind that Sufism has its social dimension the paper believes that it has something to offer for modern men living in time of great uncertainty.

Sufi group (tarekat) mainly dictates its followers to distance themselves from worldy affairs and to live in religious seclusion (zuhud). This article offers a distinct perspective on the study of sufism through examining the political activities of the sufi group the Tarekat Qadiriyah wa Naqsyabandiyah of Cukir in Indonesia and the group's political patron, the Partai Persatuan Pembangunan (PPP). The article benefits form a French philosopher Michel Foucault's concept of geneology and the notion of knowledge to better comprehend the nature of political activism of a sufi group. It further argues that basic concept of student and master (murshid) relationship in Sufism is explaining the politics of sufism in contemporary Indonesia. The mutual relation between leaders of the sufi group and the PPP has facilitated the crossing boundaries of sufi basic principle of non-participatory politics.

The eight sections of the present essay are drawn from the lectures I delivered at Princeton University and at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1969-1970. Because of the diverse nature of the audience I did not go into the details that would be necessary in a new approach to a traditional problem. Instead, my principal aim was to present a brief sketch of the contents of what may be called Persian mysticism, while showing at the same time the remarkable role that this variety of Islamic mysticism has played in the cultural development of Persia.The origins of Sufism—as Islamic mysticism is generally called—presents a very controversial problem indeed, but that Persia was the cradle of early Sufism is beyond doubt. Moreover, if mysticism is taken to be—as it usually is—an expression of man's belief in direct connection with the godhead, the well-known ethical concepts of the Zoroastrians—for whom every particular deed of daily life, good or bad, is the joint product of man and either the principle of Good or of Evil—might also be considered as unconscious expressions of a pantheistic type of mysticism.

Eclectic Sufsm that might be interpreted as a modern form of subjectivity construction has been observed in Morocco and Pakistan. This article reports comparable phenomena elsewhere, using the case of the Arabic translation of Elif Shafak's novel The Forty Rules of Love. The article argues that, in the wider Arab world as in Morocco and Pakistan, the localization of eclectic Sufsm is an instance of the reinterpretation of Islamic traditions to incorporate globally relevant social imaginaries. It questions, however, the association between eclectic Sufsm and individualism, and argues that there is also a further form of localization: the application of eclectic Sufism to contemporary political conditions, notably the problem of sectarianism.

The present article analyses the evolution of Sufism in Chechnya. The study of the Sufi community, by one of its members, contributes to an understanding of the changes that took place in Chechen society in the second half of the twentieth century. Particular attention is paid to the integration of Sufi orders into the political system of the Republic. This essay investigates the isolation of Chechen Sufism from the rest of the Sufi world and its reasons, likewise its impact on the formation of a specifically Chechen Sufism. First among studies of North Caucasian Sufism, it raises the issue of the substitution of the political system by Sufi orders. There is a growing tendency towards the politicisation of Sufism in Chechnya, reflecting the alliance of Sufi orders with government. It is also a result of the quest for a political system in Chechen society, where clan relations are still strong.

At a time when the popular imagination outside the Muslim world has been captured by images of Muslim "fundamentalists" terrorising the "West" and when predominantly Muslim countries themselves are under a variety of political pressures to express solidarity with narrowly legalistic lslam, it is timely to reappraise the actual variety of Islamic religiosity active in the lives of ordinary Muslims. Considerable effort is now being made by scholars, governments and private risk assessment agencies, to identify the social spaces occupied by intolerant, exclusivist expressions of Islam deriving from narrowly legalistic understandings of Islam. However, less energy is being directed towards identifying the contemporary modalities of liberal, non-exclusiuist modes of lslamic religiosity.DOI:10.15408/sdi.v10i3.628