Mystic Tendencies In Islam M M Zuhuru Ddin Ahnad

Mystic Tendencies In Islam M M Zuhuruddin Ahmad

This book aims to explain how mysticism originated and developed in the Islamic world. The author has attempted to analyze the chief elements of the so-called Islamic mysticism and show how its basic principles are related to the fundamental tenets of Islam.

It was necessary for this purpose to give a brief account of the founder of Islam and his companions, and to show how their life could have helped to suggest and develop the chief mystic theories among the Muslims. It is purported to be a criticism of the origin and development of the Sufi movement among the Muslims, in the light of the Quran and the Traditions of the prophet, the two chief sources of knowledge about Islam.

Western orientalists have been writing voluminous books concerning the development of Mystic theories in the Islamic world. But their efforts are often marred by their reliance on the works of unknown authors. Their inferences from such works give an impression to the readers that the Muslim Mystics had lived a life different from the life and tenets of the founder of Islam. Their writings seem to suggest that Muslim saints had chalked out for themselves a path of spiritual progress, which had very little in common with the path of the prophet and his companions, and almost invariably aim at proving that this new path founded by these saints in some way made amends for the inherent defects of Islam as a theory of life. There is nothing farther from the truth than this suggestion of the Western scholars. The present writer has made a humble attempt to prove that the Muslim saints, the original founders of the different Sufi sects, were pious Muslims trying to follow the path of the prophet like the rest of the believers, differing only in this respect that they were distinguished for their sincerity, piety, love, and fear of God and their zeal in following the prophet in every detail of conduct.

The later accretions to the Sufi theories were partly due to the peculiar conditions of the disintegrating and degenerating Islamic society and partly due to the foreign influences which in the end deprived the Islamic faith of its pristine purity. Various movements started in the Islamic world to purge Islamic society of foreign elements have also been briefly described in the end. The author has tried to rely on well-known Sufi writers and has avoided reference to books of doubtful authority as far as possible.