Islamic Mysticism

Sufism or Taṣawwuf (Arabic: التصوف‎‎), which is often defined as "Islamic mysticism," "the inward dimension of Islam," or "the phenomenon of mysticism within Islam," is a mystical trend in Islam "characterized ... [by particular] values, ritual practices, doctrines and institutions" which began very early on in Islamic history and which represents "the main manifestation and the most important and central crystallization of" mystical practice in Islam.

Existing in both Sunni and Shia Islam, Sufism is not a distinct sect, as is sometimes erroneously assumed, but a method of approaching or a way of understanding the religion, which strives to take the regular practice of the religion to the "supererogatory level" through simultaneously "fulfilling ... [the obligatory] religious duties" and finding a "way and a means of striking a root through the 'narrow gate' in the depth of the soul out into the domain of the pure arid unimprisonable Spirit which itself opens out on to the Divinity." Historically, practitioners of Sufism have been referred to as "Sufis" (/ˈsuːfi/; صُوفِيّ ; ṣūfī), an Arabic word which is believed by some scholars to have originally indicated the "woollen clothes (ṣūf) or rough garb" which the early Islamic mystics wore.

Historically, Sufism became "an incredibly important part of Islam" and "one of the most widespread and omnipresent aspects of Muslim life" in Islamic civilization from the early medieval period onwards, when it began to permeate nearly all major aspects of Sunni Islamic life in regions stretching from India and Iraq to the Balkans and Senegal. Sufism continued to remain a crucial part of daily Islamic life until the twentieth century, when its historical influence upon Islamic civilization began to be undermined by modernism as well as be combated by the rise of Salafism and Wahhabism. Islamic scholar Timothy Winter has remarked: "[In] classical, mainstream, medieval Sunni Islam ... [the idea of] 'orthodox Islam' would not ... [have been possible] without Sufism," and that the classical belief in Sufism being an essential component of Islam has only weakened in some quarters of the Islamic world "a generation or two ago" with the rise of Salafism. In the modern world, the classical interpretation of Sunni orthodoxy, which sees in Sufism an essential dimension of Islam alongside the disciplines of jurisprudence and theology, is represented by institutions such as Al-Azhar University and Zaytuna College, with Al-Azhar's current Grand Imam Ahmed el-Tayeb recently defining "Sunni orthodoxy" as being a follower "of any of the four schools of [legal] thought (Hanafi, Shafi’i, Maliki or Hanbali) and ... [also] of the Sufism of Imam Junayd of Baghdad in doctrines, manners and [spiritual] purification."

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