An interesting study on Naqshbandi Sufi influence on modern Islamic political revival:
With references to influence of Shaykh Abul HasAn Ali Nadwi on Syrian Ikhwan.
Sufi Fundamentalism between India and the Middle East*
Itzchak Weismann – University of Haifa
In Martin Van Bruinessen and Julia Day Howell (eds.), Sufism and the 'Modern' in
Islam (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2007), pp. 115-128.
Read Full text here:
Introductions
Contemporary Muslim perceptions of Sufism, and following them much of the scholarly literature, are dominated by the radical Islamist viewpoint. According to this perspective Sufis are the most prominent example of deviation from the pure religion of the forefathers (al-salaf) and therefore are largely to be blamed for the so-called decline of Islam. Yet such a view ignores the major role that Sufism played in religious revival and reform efforts in latter-day Islam, as well as in the struggle against European colonialism.1 It also overlooks the fact that despite their criticism of popular mystical practices, leaders of the early fundamentalist trends of the second half of the nineteenth century, prominent among them the Ahl-i Hadith in India and the Salafiyya in the Arab world, remained committed to Sufi revivalist ideas and did not reject Sufism as such.2 When Salafi concepts were embodied in the following century in socio-religious movements such as the Muslim Brothers in Egypt and the Jama‘at-i Islami in the Indian subcontinent, these too, though transcending the Sufi tariqas, still drew on their modes of organization.3
Conclusion:
"Ahmad Kuftaru, ‘Abd al-Fattah Abu Ghudda, and Sa‘id Hawwa represent different ways within the broader Islamist middle strand of coping with the political and religious challenges of modern Syria. Kuftaru has kept to the traditional Sufi framework while allying with the State; Abu Ghudda and Hawwa transcended this framework while joining the opposition movement of the Muslim Brothers (Ikhwan al Muslimun), the one being primarily a religious scholar (‘alim), the other an Islamist ideologue and activist. All three were influenced by the ideas of the Indian scholar and propagandist Abu al-Hasan ‘Ali al-Nadwi, who like them came from a Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi background and lived under a non-Islamic government. Each of the three further elaborated Nadwi’s ideas into a scheme of “spiritual education” in accordance with his own point of view and needs. For Kuftaru, the notion of doing away with the Sufi terminology serves as a means to lure the moderate Islamists to make peace with the government. Abu Ghudda implemented the same idea in order to focus on what he regarded as the most urgent task of preserving the Islamic heritage in a secularized age. Finally, Hawwa relied on the complementary concept of rabbaniyya to propose a grassroots organization that would allow the opposition to continue its work under a hostile and vigilant regime. Their different solutions notwithstanding, these three Syrian men of religion thus ultimately shared with their Indian colleague the ideal of combining a Sufi type of spirituality with a fundamentalist ideology as the basis for a moderate alternative to both backward Sufis and vociferous radical Islamists."
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