Sufism - Lesson 2

People from the Sahabah were dying at the time of Uthman so there were less people who had directly spoken/interacted with the Prophet (SAW). Teachings were passed down but the understanding was not the same.

Original Meccan + Medinan society isn’t the same everywhere

• Academisation of Islam = going to a class to learn about Islam (this was divided into different modules)

  • This was very different than the time of the Prophet (SAW)

  • Islam is a lived tradition - taught through life and experience however it has now been modernised and it is taught in classrooms/modules

Tazkiyah is not taught, it is learned through experience

• During the time of the Prophet (SAW), he was able to help others when they needed however, we now don’t have this so it has become more difficult

• Sufisim was an attempt to take people back to the ‘days of the old’, the early days of Islam but focusing on the key ideas we have seen so far.

Different understandings of ‘Sufi’

1st understanding: ‘suf’ = wool in arabic

• referred to a group of sincere worshippers after the time of the Prophet (SAW) who were known for wearing woolen clothes

  • They wore it because it was cheap and to detach from materialism (Zuhd)

2nd understanding: ‘ahl-e-suffa’ = ‘people of the bench’

• A group of people who lived in the first mosque in Medina of the Prophet (SAW)

Hadith ‘people of the bench’ (Ahl us Suffa)

Key people: Abu Huaria & the Prophet (SAW)

• The people of the Suffa had no material wealth, no families, no money and no one to rely upon

• Whenever the Prophet (SAW) had anything such as gifts, food etc., he would share it with them

  • The people solely relied on the Prophet (SAW) to survive

• They lived in the Prophet’s Mosque (SAW) and the Hadith mentions how the Prophet (SAW) found a bowl of milk and share it with the people of the Suffa before drinking some for himself

William Chittick

• Westernised media + propaganda has negatively portrayed Islam to make Muslims look terrifying + scary.

• However when people actually meet Muslims, they they think the opposite and that they are nice

• Instead of owning up to them being wrong, they labelled the ‘nicer Muslims; as sufis - an entirely different sect of Islam

• This allowed the western media to still maintain their previous ideas whilst also dealing with the views that some Muslims are nice.