Why genuine Tasawwuf is prone to misrepresentation

 Maulana ‘Abd al-Bāri Nadwi, a spiritual successor (khalifa) of Hakeemul Ummah Ashraf Ali Thānawi RA, points out that tasawwuf has been perceived in two ways throughout Islamic history. 

First, there is the tasawwuf of the Qur’ān and hadīth, which was practiced by the pious predecessors of Islam and their true followers. Then, there is the pseudo-tasawwuf, an imprudent syncretism of Islam and other religious and spiritual systems of the world. 

‘Abd al-Bāri Nadwi explains that the reason why genuine tasawwuf is prone to misrepresentation is because the “degree of misguidance and mistakes caused by a subject are proportionate to the degree of depth, subtlety, and intricacy found in that subject. Tasawwuf is the most subtle and intricate, and in many ways enigmatic, of the Islamic sciences, because it not only reforms the exoteric self, but it lays greater stress on purifying the esoteric self, which encompasses spiritual dimensions unseen by the physical eye. .” 

[Mawlana ‘Abd al-Bāri Nadwi, Tajdid-e suluk-o tasawwuf (Lucknow: Bari Publications, 1993), 4.]