ABSTRACT The connection between the unity of God and the multiplicity seen in the universe represents the central concern for the Sufi thinker, Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ‘Arabī (d. 638/1240). It deeply affected the thought of the Southeast Asian mystic, Ḥamza Fanṣūrī (d. 1590?), and his alleged disciple, Shams al-Dīn al-Sumatra’ī (d. 1630). Traces of this idea, through its popularisation in the poems of Fanṣūrī, exert a powerful influence on the Indonesian intellectual topography to this day. This article investigates the (...) concept of unity and multiplicity, of the One expressed as the many in the phenomenal world, in Ibn ‘Arabī’s Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam (Ringstones of Wisdom). Through a close textual reading of the chapters of Ādam (Adam) and Ibrāhīm (Abraham) and their various commentaries by the most influential followers of Ibn ‘Arabī, it concludes that the representation of ‘oneness of being’ (waḥdat al-wujūd), which was extensively taught by Fanṣūrī in Aceh, as an erasure of the God-Man divide, is untenable. (shrink)

Interpretation of the Unicity doctrine and teachings regarding sufism of Abdurrauf Singkel, an Indonesian ulama from Aceh; study of an Islamic manuscript.

In this deeply learned work, Toshihiko Izutsu compares the metaphysical and mystical thought-systems of Sufism and Taoism and discovers that, although historically unrelated, the two share features and patterns which prove fruitful for a transhistorical dialogue. His original and suggestive approach opens new doors in the study of comparative philosophy and mysticism. Izutsu begins with Ibn 'Arabi, analyzing and isolating the major ontological concepts of this most challenging of Islamic thinkers. Then, in the second part of the book, Izutsu (...) turns his attention to an analysis of parallel concepts of two great Taoist thinkers, Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu. Only after laying bare the fundamental structure of each world view does Izutsu embark, in the final section of the book, upon a comparative analysis. Only thus, he argues, can he be sure to avoid easy and superficial comparisons. Izutsu maintains that both the Sufi and Taoist world views are based on two pivots--the Absolute Man and the Perfect Man--with a whole system of oncological thought being developed between these two pivots. Izutsu discusses similarities in these ontological systems and advances the hypothesis that certain patterns of mystical and metaphysical thought may be shared even by systems with no apparent historical connection. This second edition of Sufism and Taoism is the first published in the United States. The original edition, published in English and in Japan, was prized by the few English-speaking scholars who knew of it as a model in the field of comparative philosophy. Making available in English much new material on both sides of its comparison, Sufism and Taoism richly fulfills Izutsu's motivating desire "to open a new vista in the domain of comparative philosophy.". (shrink)

For most people, a lie would be defined solely as a false statement. However, many philosophers argue that a statement does not need to be false to be considered a lie, what is important is that the speaker believes that the statement is false. In a prototype semantic analysis, there are three elements of a lie, namely factual falsity, belief, and intention (Coleman and Kay, 1981). As in the case of philosophers’ arguments, English, Spanish, Arabic and Hungarian speakers consider belief (...) as the main element of a prototypical lie. By replicating Coleman and Kay’s study of Indonesian speakers, the present paper tries to answer the following research questions. (1) Does the Indonesian word bohong ‘lie’ consist of the Coleman & Kay’s prototype elements? (2) If it does, what is the order of the elements? (3) Do Indonesians interpret the situation in which a lie occurs similarly to speakers of other languages? And (4) how to interpret the results of this experiment from the philosophical perspective? The results reveal that not all elements suggested by Coleman and Kay (1981) are present in lying according to Indonesians and the factuality of the statement is more important to Indonesians than belief. Thus, Indonesians have a perception of a lie that is different from the definitions suggested by the philosophers. (shrink)

Sufism in Central Asia: New Perspectives on Sufi Traditions, 15th–21st Centuries Edited by DeWeeseDevin and GrossJo-Ann, xviii + 340 pp. Price HB $126.00. EAN 978–9004367876.

This book examines a series of common metaphors in the works of Derrida and the Sufism of Muhyddin Ibn 'Arabi, considered to be of the most influential figures in Islamic thought. The author addresses the significant absence of attention on the relationship between Islam and Derrida and also provides a deconstructive perspective on Ibn 'Arabi.

Cirebon as we know for its commerce and name of the city of Wali. Commercially Cirebon is also famous called as the city of shrimp and geographically is labeled to as the center of the earth. Culturally Cirebon is recognized as an art city like other regions in Indonesia. This paper aims at analyzing one of the popular Cirebonese arts called Brai art containing Sufism messages. Brai art is the heritage of Cirebon containing messages of education in managing the (...) mind. The message highlighted in the Brai arts was more on exoteric religious worship. Arts express a sense of a esthetics with God by dancing and praising in five rituals. Every single ‘ raka’at ’ designates ‘ suluk ’ to God. This Brai art proves that Cirebon is recognized as the central area for the spread and development of Islam and Sufism because Cirebon has astrategic area both of the Pacific as well as and the maritime area. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to analyse a local expression of the transnational Ahbash Sufi movement in light of recent scholarship on the relationship between Salafism and Sufism as well as Islamic neo-traditionalism. Some researchers have reacted against a dichotomous relationship between fundamentalism and Sufism, instead suggesting a continuum and a mutual interdependence. We aim to contribute to a developed understanding of the process whereby some Sufi actors go on the attack against their Islamic foes by publicly (...) and loudly claiming to represent ‘true Islam’ as found in the ‘fundamentals’ of Islam – but with a different understanding of what those fundamentals are. We analyse a series of interviews with a local representative of the transnational Ahbash Sufi movement in Malmö, Sweden; the Ahbash movement has its central leadership in Lebanon. Through discussing the representative’s understanding of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ bidʿa, in particular concerning the celebration of the prophet Muhammad’s birthday, we note a combined emphasis on authoritative textual sources – including the Qurʾan and hadith literature – and the allegedly unbroken traditional knowledge transmission which secures a correct understanding of Islam. This shows an ambiguous space of Islamic thought and practice, an arguably Salafi-affected neo-traditionalist defense of Sufism, which transgresses commonly employed dichotomies between Salafism and Sufism. (shrink)

This article aims to discuss a Sufi-inspired traditional art and performance popular in Cirebon, the so-called “Brai”. The Brai is a traditional Islamic Sufism music popular among the Cirebonese. This traditional music combines sounds, lyrics, and dance that invite the practitioners and audiences to exercise the spiritual stages through music. The Brai performance follows the hierarchy of Sufi-state of minds and spiritual stages. Thus, as this article argues, the Brai is a par excellence model for the entanglement between Islam (...) and local culture. The Brai is indeed a way of the Cirebonese both to introduce Sufi-form of Islam and provides a performance where the profane arts and spiritual-Islamic Sufims are mutually entangled. (shrink)

Prvi deo ovog rada predstavlja kraci uvod u sufizam kao osobeni vid ispoljavanja unutrasnje, misticke dimenzije islama. U tom odeljku razmatra se povest, doktrina i ritualna praksa glavnih derviskih redova. U drugom delu, koji se uglavnom temelji na autorovom preliminarnom terenskom istrazivanju postojecih derviskih zajednica u Bosni i Hercegovini, vise paznje posveceno je ozivljavanju islamskog misticizma u savremenom kontekstu. U terminima sociologije religije, revitalizacija sufizma u BiH bi se mogla razumeti u sirim okvirima obnove klasicne religioznosti na Balkanu. Nakon Drugog (...) svetskog rata bila je na snazi dugogodisnja zabrana delatnosti derviskih redova u BiH, cemu je najvise doprinela modernisticki nastrojena Islamska zajednica koja je imala podrsku vladajucih struktura. To, svakako, treba uzeti u obzir kada se razmatra pitanje odnosa izmedju islamske ortodoksije i misticizma. Potpuna obnova sufizma usledila je tek devedesetih godina, po raspadu Jugoslavije i zavrsetku ratova. Tu je, dakle, rec o obnovi klasicne religioznosti, jer se sufizam, jos od osmanskog perioda, razvijao unutar ortodoksnog islama u Bosni. (shrink)

Sufism has two main dimensions: vertical (God's pleasure) and horizontal (harmony with nature, society and local wisdom). In reality, many Sufis are considered less concerned about the balancing between vertical and horizontal dimensions. The research explores the concepts and practices of hybrid Sufism undertaken by Kyais (religious leaders) and their followers in improving quality of life. Ethnography was used for exploring the mindset and activities of Kyai and his followers. This study involved four Kyais in Java and Kalimantan, (...) Indonesia. Research data were obtained through participant observations, in-depth interviews and documentation. The data were analysed by Spadley's ethnographic steps as follows: (1) domain analysis, (2) taxonomy analysis, (3) componential analysis and (4) cultural-thematic analysis. The results showed that hybrid Sufism could improve quality of life. Hybrid Sufism can better appreciate and interpret local wisdom with an attitude of preserving nature and a positive understanding of worldly wealth, increasing the hard work ethos to achieve material-spiritual qualities. CONTRIBUTION: This article shows that hybrid Sufism encourages the life of Sufis in harmony between vertical and horizontal aspects. This understanding and lifestyle give rise to respect for others, being friendly to the environment and interpreting life and local wisdom. (shrink)

Sufism has two main dimensions: vertical (God's pleasure) and horizontal (harmony with nature, society and local wisdom). In reality, many Sufis are considered less concerned about the balancing between vertical and horizontal dimensions. The research explores the concepts and practices of hybrid Sufism undertaken by Kyais (religious leaders) and their followers in improving quality of life. Ethnography was used for exploring the mindset and activities of Kyai and his followers. This study involved four Kyais in Java and Kalimantan, (...) Indonesia. Research data were obtained through participant observations, in-depth interviews and documentation. The data were analysed by Spadley's ethnographic steps as follows: (1) domain analysis, (2) taxonomy analysis, (3) componential analysis and (4) cultural-thematic analysis. The results showed that hybrid Sufism could improve quality of life. Hybrid Sufism can better appreciate and interpret local wisdom with an attitude of preserving nature and a positive understanding of worldly wealth, increasing the hard work ethos to achieve material-spiritual qualities. CONTRIBUTION: This article shows that hybrid Sufism encourages the life of Sufis in harmony between vertical and horizontal aspects. This understanding and lifestyle give rise to respect for others, being friendly to the environment and interpreting life and local wisdom. (shrink)

Sufism and Early Islamic Piety: Personal and Communal Dynamics. By Arin Shawkat Salamah-Qudsi. Cambridge: camBridge universiTy Press, 2019. Pp. xvii + 315. $99.99, £75 ; $80.

“Being is an ocean in perpetual agitation,Of this ocean people perceive but the waves.On the apparent surface of the ocean, hidden in them,Look at the surging waves arising from secret depths!”One of the leitmotifs of the literature of Iranian Sufism is the “quest for the Orient” (istishraq). It is an Orient that is neither localized nor localizable in the realm of positive geography. It escapes our normal perception; it is the mystic Orient, point of Origin and of Return, located (...) at the “heavenly pole” of the cosmic North. It figures in that geographia imaginalis that is perceived only by the power of the imagination. It is located, then, beyond the devastated lands of this sensible world, lands that incarnate troubled and dispersed hearts for Iranian Sufism. (shrink)

Commentators have mainly viewed the Ahmadiyya debate in Indonesia either as a controversy over heterodoxy or as an episode raising questions about the human rights of ‘religious minorities’. Instead, I suggest viewing these debates as a field of normative questions of secularism in which the claims of religious are renegotiated in response to the fragmentation of religious and political authority brought on by a diversification of the use of media and a loss of trust in the Indonesian post-Suharto democracy, (...) and between normative questions of secularism. (shrink)

The present study investigates the semantics of a dozen basic smell terms in Indonesian using data from a large corpus of written register. Examining how these smell terms lexicalize some odors but not others raises questions that are central to our understanding of the language of olfaction. How are smell terms structured? What does the structure of smell terms tell us about human behavior? By applying cluster analysis, the present study reveals that the Indonesian odor lexicon is structured (...) based on one dimension correlating with pleasantness. The large dataset of a written corpus enables the present study to reveal the differences in lexicalization and frequency: Indonesian smell terms have more negative types but more positive tokens in texts. This novel approach to investigating smell terms allows us to take a step closer toward our goal of understanding olfactory vocabulary, as data on token frequency are difficult to obtain in studies of minority languages. This key finding supports the Pollyanna Hypothesis: people tend to use positive words more often than negative words, but the negative words convey more information. (shrink)

In the West, one might say that understanding Sufism is a difficult task. Without authentic information and deep empathy, one has to contend with only the language about Sufism. The words cut off from the Sufi practices represent a simulacrum of Sufism, not its reality.In this thoroughly researched book, Sedgwick is confident enough as a historian to start from Plotinus and end with Ian Dallas and John G. Bennett, touching almost all issues that he finds related to (...) Sufism and visiting almost all the intellectuals whom he associates with Sufi practices in the West. The book is divided into four parts, fourteen chapters, and fifty-one sub-chapters and has a seventeen-page index of names and concepts. All illustrate... (shrink)

Sufism : various dimensions -- Spiritual traditions in India -- Rabindranath Tagore and spiritualism -- Music, poetry, and spiritual traditions -- Educational perspectives -- Epitomes of Indian culture.

This article seeks to examine the rise of _tarekat_ (Sufi order) in the context of the digital public sphere with a special attention to the Eshaykh website. As this article argues, the Eshaykh website represents an adaptation of conventional groups of _tarekat_ combined with information technology. However, this digital adoption raises a new problem, especially related to the differences in terms of access between digital _tarekat_ and conventional _tarekat_. This article—using a virtual ethnographic approach—focuses on the Eshaykh website by the (...) _Tarekat_ Naqsyabandiyah Haqqaniyah (TNH) as the primary source. The website provides all information about the _tarekat_, both the doctrine and the _wirid_, which are presented online. There is also an element of the simplification of orthodoxy which has so far been strictly guarded by conventional _tarekat_, but the rise of the Eshaykh website in the digital public sphere is offering _tarekat_ practices that are easily accessible and reach all levels of society. (shrink)

The enormous impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused Indonesian Christian leaders and theologians to become preoccupied with theodicy-humanistic questions rather than considering the rights of life for biodiversity. This is unacceptable because humans are not the only living things with the right to life and are entitled to God’s justice in all-natural disasters. According to biologists and epidemiologists, the pandemic sends a message of ecological injustice. Therefore, by using a method of reading with a perspective (...) of biological diversity, this research argues that humans and other living things have a right to God’s justice amid disasters. The Indonesian spirituality of biological diversity, which is in line with the gratitude of Francis of Assisi and Calvin’s idea of living in a church that considers God’s justice for all creation, can serve as an epistemological foundation for developing theodicy-ecological ecclesiology. Contribution: Considering the spirituality of biodiversity enables churches in Indonesia to embrace biodiversity as fellow creatures of God post-pandemic. In this way, they can affirm their ecclesiastical identity as the ecological body of Christ amid ecological injustice. (shrink)

In this volume Henry Corbin emphasizes the differences between the exoteric and esoteric forms of Islam. He also reveals that whereas in the West philosophy and religion were at odds, they were inseparably linked, at least during this period, in the Islamic world. A valuable section of notes and appendices includes original translation of numerous Sufi treatises.

Originally published in 1950. Thinkers such as Ghazali and Ibn `Arabi, poets such as Ibn al-Farid, Rumi, Hafiz and Jami were greatly inspired by the lives and sayings of the early Sufis. This book was the first short history of Sufism to be published in any language, illustrating the development of its doctrines with numerous quotations from literature.

Interest in esoteric and mystical aspects of Islam in present-day Russia and its Soviet and tsarist predecessors is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. The article starts with a critical discussion of Aleksandr Dugin’s interpretations of Sufism in his ambitious intellectual project Noomachia: Wars of the Intellect [and] Civilizations of Borderlands. The author then compares Dugin’s conceptualizations of Sufism with those of several Russian writers who lived in the second half of the nineteenth century and whose portrayal of (...) class='Hi'>Sufism and its followers is similar to Dugin’s in some important respects. These ideologically driven constructions of Sufism stand in sharp contrast to the self-consciously objective scholarly ones that emerged in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century within the Russian academic and teaching institutions specializing in Eastern religions, languages, and cultures. The author argues that Russian academic conceptualizations of Sufism mirrored those of the fin-de-siècle German Islamology and then proceeds to examine the profound changes in Russian attitudes to Sufism, and Islam generally, after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the rise of the Soviet state that based its legitimacy on the Marxist-Leninist concept of history with its pervasive atheism, materialism, and emphasis on class struggle. It shaped Soviet-era academic and nonacademic approaches to Sufism until the mid-1980s, when Soviet scholars began to question the Marxist-Leninist certainties of the previous six decades. (shrink)

The Sufi tradition remains one of the most mysterious and least understood systems of self-realization. This book demystifies the practice of the sohbet—an ad hoc discourse—as the central instructional tool in the globally influential Naqshbandi-Haqqani Order. -/- It approaches the practice using categories of improvised music to establish a framework for analyzation. Its ritualized formal structure, illustrated via selected talks of Shaykh Nazim Adil al-Haqqani, discloses the underlying—and assumingly primary—function to provoke prolonged states of raised awareness in listeners and condition (...) their sympathetic nervous system. -/- In an extensive discussion based on several years of field research in Cyprus, the book relates this intention to similar practices in other traditional knowledge systems by proposing psychophysical interpretations based on psychology, biochemistry, neuroscience, or quantum physics. It will appeal to scholars and students of Sufism, Islamic studies, and comparative religion, as well as those interested in performance studies and improvised music, interpersonal communication, and education. (shrink)

On dawah pattern of Yusuf Abul Mahasin Tajul Khalwati al-Maqassariy al Bantaniy, an ulama from Makassar.

This article aims to study Sufism (taṣawwuf) and inspiration (ilhâm), which is the main means of the mystical knowledge, in the thought of Ibn Taymiyya who is known generally as an exponent of a tradition grounded on the understanding of Salaf. He is considered by majority to be a rigid opponent of Sufism because of his unconventional interpretations of Sufi terminology. Also, since Ibn Taymiyya constantly offers the Qur’ān, ḥadīth, and the opinions of Salaf as the base of (...) religious knowledge, the idea that he does not lean toward inspirational and rational knowledge and he does not give a place for them in his epistemology came out and has grown in the course of time. As a result of our research, however, we realize Ibn Taymiyya admits the epistemological value of inspiration along with Sufism conditionally. While he divides Sufism into Early and Later periods, he examines inspiration in the context of knowledge (bâb al-ʿilm) which is considered to be a subcategory of supernatural events. Ibn Taymiyya, who believes that inspirational knowledge must be tested by means of the Qur’ān, Sunna, and the opinions of Salaf, without rejecting its reality, assesses the subject matter in detail through his own criteria. Therefore, this article, in which the subject is elaborated critically and descriptively, focuses on the approach of Ibn Taymiyya to Sufism and inspiration that is the basic element of Sufi knowledge. (shrink)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many religious college students have found comfort in God, while others may have developed anger toward God; however, no studies have systematically compared the multidimensional effects of religiousness on how Muslim and Christian students react to stressors such as COVID-19. This study addressed this gap in the literature by investigating which of the Four Basic Dimensions of Religiousness Scale were significant predictors for both taking comfort in and feeling anger toward God among Muslim and Christian college (...) students in Indonesia, while also controlling for the influence of neuroticism, a known predictor for attitudes toward God. Muslims reported that all dimensions of the 4-BDRS were significant predictors of comfort, with bonding as a negative predictor, while Christians reported that belonging was the only insignificant predictor. Muslims reported that believing and behaving were negative predictors of anger, while Christians reported negative effects only for bonding ; however, bonding did not significantly predict anger when analyzed separately for men and women. Therefore, to decrease their anger toward and increase the comfort they find in God, Muslims must focus on their beliefs and exercise the commandments of Islam. Christians, though, must focus on increasing cognitive, affective, and behavioral aspects of religiousness to find comfort, while having better personal relationships with God could be key in reducing anger toward God. (shrink)

This article is concerned with the environmental conservation efforts that respond to the human race’s ecological crisis. It does this by looking at Sufistic-based environmental conservation at the pesantren of ath-Taariq in West Java, Indonesia. Data were obtained through interviews, observation and documentation using qualitative methods. Two findings were yielded; firstly, environmental conservation practices taught to students include ecology teaching, producing plant seeds and recycling waste into organic fertiliser. Secondly, significant steps have been taken by the establishment for reforestation and (...) nature conservation motivated by Sufi values and doctrines, including the concept of zuhud [asceticism] and gratitude, kinship and mutual assistance, love and blessing, as well as tafakkur [contemplation]. Contribution: This article helps develop studies of Sufism and environmental conservation. It offers a new direction for the teaching and learning of contemporary Sufism that all Islamic educational institutions could adopt. (shrink)

The rapid growth of Indonesian Heavy Metal music, especially the Death Metal subgenre, since around the turn of the millennium, has been quite remarkable. Indonesia is now numerically the largest scene in the world. Man, the vocalist of Jasad, told the author that the provincial West Javanese city of Bandung had 128 active Death Metal bands as at February 2011. I discuss the cancellation of an April 2012 music festival held in the Bandung hinterland by police halfway through the (...) festival, and explain how and why it took place. Police became nervous and worried about Heavy Metal shows following the deaths of eleven concertgoers, due to a crowd crush, at a Beside album launch in Bandung in 2008. I also analyze the “maternal rage” of a band member’s mother (also a policewoman at the scene) from the perspective of grounded gendered cosmopolitanism. Lastly, a short case study of Sickles, a young band from the religiously-conservative Madura Island, shows the problems that young bands experience plus the type of global underground support which they can attract. (shrink)

Today, Islamic scholars are faced with a very interesting situation: while in traditional Islamic societies, Sufism has lost some of its significance compared to the nineteenth and the first third of the twentieth century. and in republican turkey, we are also witnessing a kind of expansion of the sufism of the pas west, especially to the countries of europe, usa, canada and australia. Interestingly, in European countries, traditionally professed by Islam, Sufi tirades are quite widespread. This applies in (...) particular to Albania as well as to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and the like. (shrink)

This article presents a discussion of key aspects of knowledge in Sufism through an analysis of the film Bab’Aziz: The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul. The dominant Western pe...

The present study aimed to investigate academic dishonesty among college students in Indonesia, as well as exploring various aspects of morality that may affect academic dishonesty. This study drew upon data obtained from an online survey of 574 students from diploma, undergraduate, and postgraduate levels of study in Indonesia. The data revealed a high prevalence of academic dishonesty in Indonesian college students and indicated that the level of academic dishonesty is affected by gender, college origin, and study level. Regressions (...) confirmed that higher academic dishonesty is associated with lower moral integrity and higher level of moral disengagement, as expected, but not with moral foundations. We also present detailed examinations on the three forms of academic dishonesty and discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings. (shrink)