Sufism - general

Cairo stories
Parable of the elephant
Alastu (the covenant of pre-eternity and imperative to remember)
Sufism as a return to origins
Name and reality ("formerly Sufism was a reality without a name; now it is a name without a reality" - Kashf al-Mahjub, 10th century text of al-Hujwiri)
Reason and controlled observation vs. experiential knowledge of reality
The deep meaning of Monotheism (tawhid): God as the Only True Reality (al-Haqiqa)
Ineffability of mystical experience and knowledge; futility and necessity of all expression (the great Sufi poet Jalal al-Din Rumi said: "By Allah, I care nothing for poetry. There is nothing worse in my eyes. To me, it is like the cook who plunges his hand into tripe, cleaning it out for the sake of a guest’s appetite.")
Sufism as transcending Islam (Ibn Arabi, Inayat Khan), or apart from Islam (early Orientalists, modern Muslim reformers), or deeply embedded in Islam, as its mystical dimension (Annemarie Schimmel)...
- Qur'an
- Hadith (Sunna)
- Non-sectarian affiliation groups (tariqas) performing supererogatory devotions in addition to the more usual Islamic ones (prayer, fasting, alms, pilgrimage), not replacing them (ordinarily).
Sufism as devotion to saints, intermediaries
Sufism as turuq, social orders

What is Sufism?

What is Sufism? Doctrinal, social, ritual, discursive aspects
A critical view: Sufism as created, foreign...
- Sufism, Sufi, tasawwuf
- Fundamentalism, Salafism
- Orientalism
- New Age popularity (e.g. Rumi)
Sufism of...
- Asceticism
- Adab (ethics, humility)
- Devotion & Remembrance
- Love as Submission
- Ecstasy
- Knowledge of Unity (wahdat al-wujud)
- Self-perfection (al-insan al-kamil)
- Antinomianism (e.g.: the Divinely mad, majdhub; the anti-sanctimonious, Malamatiyya; the wandering poor ascetic, darwish...)
Islam: basic practices (5 arkan, pillars)
- Shahada: testimony of faith
- Salah: canonical prayer (5x/day)
- Sawm: fast (dawn to sunset) during month of revelation, Ramadan
- Zakah: poor due
- Hajj: pilgrimage to Mecca
Islamic core
- Mystical practices, visions and journeys of the Prophet (Hira, Mi`raj)
- The Awliya or saints: holy men and women of Islam
- Non-sectarian nature: supererogatory practices
Sufism as...
- "Spiritual path" (tariqa)
- "Spiritual journey" (siluk)
- Spiritual state (hal)
- Spiritual knowledge (ma`rifa, `irfan)
- Ritual practices (e.g. dhikr)
Neoplatonic elements
- Christian ascetic elements (monk Buhayra)
- Ancient Middle Eastern religion (Egyptian, Persian...)
Unity (tawhid)
- Inner unity of Reality
- Outer multiplicity (illusion)
Division in interpretation:
- Islam - Iman - Ihsan: outer to inner
- Zahir - Batin: symbolism (signifer to signified)
- Sharia - Tariqa - Haqiqa
- The maqamat, as a series of parallel oppositions (fear/hope, contraction/expansion, baqaa/fanaa)
Inner (batini) interpretations of Sharia (as derived from Qur'an, Sunna, qiyas, ijmaa`)
- Tawhid and Unity of Being
Order and disorder
- Social: turuq vs. darwish
- Emotional: closeness vs. ecstasy (hal, jadhb, shath)
- Ritual: hadra vs. mawlid
Manifestations of the Sacred
- Nature
- Traditional arts

Sufism and the person

al-`Alam al-Azali and "Alastu"
Individual experiential understanding, independence
Social group, tariqa, shaykh, submission to
Psychology: ruh and nafs

Sufism and Qur'an and Sunna

Qur'an: God is closer than your jugular vein
Hadith Qudsi:
- Remembrance
- Mystical connection

Literary expressions of Sufism

Sacred interpretation of conventional poetic themes:
- praise (madih) - typically directed to Prophet, Saints
- love (al-hubb al-ilahi)
- physical attraction (ghazal)
- intoxication (khamr)

Early Madih (praise poems)

Classical Arabic poetry - the ambiguity of spiritual love

Tawasin

Performative expressions of Sufism

Remembrance (dhikr)
Spiritual audition (sama`)
Sufi liturgy (hadra)
Spiritual hymns (inshad sufi)

Music and Islam

Islamic performance genres

Inshad sufi

Films and film segments

Basic Islam

Essentials of Islam

Holy Days: watch segments #12-17 (background) and segment #23 (Sufism). Please note a couple of factual errors:

Ramadan does not end on the 27th of the month; rather the 27th is widely acknowledged as the "Lailat al-Qadr", Night of Power, when the Qur'an was first revealed to Muhammad.
Ibrahim's Egyptian concubine Hajar was the mother of Ismaili (Ishmael), not the father! (the voiceover erroneously says "his son", rather than "her son")

On Sufism:

I am a Sufi, I am a Muslim

Muslim Mysticism (you may wish to watch more of this film in conjunction with the course on Mysticism)

Rumi

Islamic Mystics and the Five Pillars of Islam (04:44) (esp. segments 6-10)

Sufism in North Carolina

Islamic Sufism - in Africa

Sufism and Dervishes

On Sufi Music:

Sacred sounds (several segments devoted to Muslim regions, from the Festival of World Sacred Music held in Fez, Morocco.

Shaykh Yasin al-Tuhami, prominent Sufi singer of Egypt

I am a Sufi, I am a Muslim (including music segments)