Due to the large number of recent studies studying the movements of Islamic mysticism and its spiritual ideas, the intellectual backgrounds of scholars are not receiving enough attention. Some of these studies are affected by the problems of the difficulty of the Sufi text, influencing certain historical approaches, and prejudices that constitute an important aspect of the studies of modern Sufism.
Among recent attempts to study Sufism, Alexander Kanish, an American academic of Russian origin, is trying to study Sufism in his local contexts, especially in the Caucasus, Yemen, and North Africa.
The professor of Islamic studies at the University of Michigan highlights the relationship between Islam and the Russian Empire in the North Caucasus, which includes a unique Islamic ethnic diversity, and considers that Sufism was associated in this region with an ideology resistant to Russian invasion and domination of the region from the 1920s to the present day.
History literary writing
Kneish relies on the idea put forward by American historian Hayden White (died 2018) that history is not a system based on facts and dates as much as a form of literary narration, as historians collect materials, events and dates randomly scattered across records and historical sources, and try to formulate a unified narrative Through rhetorical techniques, metaphors and symbols. White considers that history is a metaphorical literary narration that has four rhetorical images: metaphor, metaphor, metaphor and ridicule, which are woven into the narrated story.
Kneish uses this perspective that focuses on the literary nature of writing history, to conclude that "every account of Sufism is - to a large or limited extent - a fictional work and evidence of a creative literary process." That is why any perspective on the study of Sufism should not be excluded, either by academics or others, and from Orientalists and anthropologists, or from Muslim scholars of all shades, which accumulates knowledge and illuminates and complements the various discourses of the perplexing Sufi phenomenon.
In his presentation of the book Kanish, “Islamic Sufism… A New History,” the Azerbaijani scholar in the field of Islamic studies, Kamal Qasimov, defended the author’s use of polyphony in the interpretation of a complex phenomenon such as Sufism, considering that the prevailing modern image of Sufism is a “distorted structure” invented in studies European Orientalism during the eighteenth century.
Kneish considers that Sufism was and remains a complete reality for its followers, opponents and students alike, inside and outside the Sufi tradition. His traditions were also written in Arabic, Persian, Turkish and other Islamic languages, and were translated by western and Russian orientalists.
Orientalism and Sufism
Kneish considers presenting Sufism in the way that the Sufis themselves interpret was not an option for European and Russian Islamic scholars, as there is a barrier of language, and the multiplicity of methods, philosophies, and mystical forms that cannot be considered to be one or the dominant of them. Also, the records of the Middle Ages and the biographies of the Sufis do not provide a comprehensive, complete, and organized account of how Sufism emerged, when it emerged, developed, and transformed in various parts of the Islamic world.
He adds that these factors necessitated the "invention" of a general concept or understanding of Sufism, which the Orientalists could imagine or draw in order for the reader and the European public to perceive it in a language that it understands and fits the recipient's own cultural background.
Kneish explains that the prejudices and preconceived notions of orientalists are clear and undeniable, considering that the orientalist biases are inevitable because they studied all religions through a cultural analytical perspective affected by the European, Christian and Jewish environment. This is evident in the classifications they have introduced to other cultures as rational or irrational, secular or religious, sacred or profane, and so on.
But he adds that the Orientalists' biases, influenced by their own intellectual preferences and convictions, are neither more nor less severe than the biases of the Sufis who write about their doctrines and practices themselves, so no author - whether from within Sufism or outside them - can escape the power relations, cultural assumptions and unjust knowledge practices For the social context, Sufism in their various ways - just like those with intellectual currents in Islam - consider themselves the most correct.
Kneish points to the prevalence of colonial and imperialist assumptions and stereotypes about Islamic societies, and the propagation of ideas such as the original hostility of Islam to progress and rationality, the blind intolerance of its followers, and the superiority of European civilization over the corrupt Middle East, and these prior assumptions spread especially in the era of colonialism.
The author of the book "Islamic Sufism .. A New History" criticizes Orientalism that establishes the backwardness and dehumanization of the East, in agreement with the American-Palestinian thinker Edward Said that some orientalists "have already sought clear political and ideological agendas aimed at facilitating and justifying European colonization of Muslim lands."
Russian reading of Sufism
In his previous research published in the German academic journal Die Welt des Islams, Kneish notes that Russian Orientalism studying Sufism was influenced by the involvement of local Sufi orders, especially Naqshbandi, in resisting the authorities, as Sufi Dagestan imams were at the forefront of Islamic resistance to Soviet expansion in Caucasus during the Cold War era.
He also notes that Russian studies of Islamic mysticism in the Cold War era were based on a recapitulation of Western academic works, which included the assumption that the roots of Islamic mysticism were “foreign” and ascribed to Buddhist, Hindu, Christian or even Neoplatonic philosophy. Another common belief among Russian orientalists is the association of Sufism with the reactions of non-Arab Muslim races such as Persians, Indians, and Turks to "Semitic Genius" (Arabic).
For the Russians, Kneish says, the study of the "Dervishes" was desirable because of the great influence they had on the new subjects of the Russian Empire (Muslims). In addition, as the history shows, the Dervishes are able to become the most dangerous. They are "agitators and dodgers against the applicable law," according to Russian Orientalists.
Sufism and colonization
The Russian Orientalists noted the connection of the Sufi orders with the confrontation with the French colonial powers in Algeria since the 19th century, and Kenesh quotes the Russian orientalist, Pyotr Bozdnev, as saying that the Sufi Dervishes use their influence on the "ignorant and superstitious" masses to sabotage, discredit the state and incite hostility and hatred against the Russians. And disobeying the authorities.
As a result of the ferocity of the Caucasus War from 1817 to 1864 between the Russian Empire and the Caucasian Imamate led by Imam Shamil (1797-1871) and the tribes of Chechnya, Dagestan, Karachay and Circassians, Sufi murids were depicted in Russian Orientalist literature as tribal fanatics with no power in the hands of their leaders from Spiritual guides who live in the Caucasian mountains.
Since the first clash between the Sufi murids of the murids, through which the Naqshbandi Sufi councils resisted the Russian invasion since the campaign of Tsar Peter the Great in 1722, the Sufi murids movement led the resistance against successive Russian invasions, and the murids chose their imam.
Numerous Russian Orientalist writings at that point described the regime of the murids and Sufism affected by the Naqshbandi order as bloody rogue teachings and evil politics under the guise of religion.
Kneish believes that the Russian reading of Sufism is inseparable from the Western colonial view - and the French in particular - of the Sufi movements that faced colonization in the Arab Maghreb and North Africa, as contemporary Orientalism of the colonial campaigns focused on the role of Sufism in providing resistance in Libya, Algeria, Sudan, Somalia and even in Indonesia. .