Sufism in contemporary society: an interview with Faouzi Skali (2000)
Interview conducted by Marc Boudet with Faouzi Skali, published in Le Matin du Sahara et du Maghreb (2 and 3 March 2000), on the occasion of the conference “Sufism in contemporary society” in Fes; reproduced from the tariqa.fr press review.
The conference entitled “Sufism in contemporary society” was to be held in Fes on Saturday 4 March at the Al Qods cultural complex (from 9 a.m. to noon and from 3.30 p.m. to 6 p.m.), and we met one of its organisers and speakers. Mr Faouzi Skali, Doctor of Anthropology, Ethnology and Religious Sciences, author of numerous works on Sufism including “La Futuwah”, “La Voie Soufie”, “Traces de Lumière” (Albin Michel), and “Le face à face des cœurs” (recently published in France by Editions du Relié), so that he might shed light for us on what Sufism represents, a spiritual path he explores as a disciple.
What exactly is Sufism, is it an authentic path of islam and does it conform to the Sunna?
It is quite telling that such a question can be asked at all, as if Sufism were something that had only come into existence today, whereas it has accompanied the entire tradition and civilisation of islam since its origin, since it is nothing other than the innermost and deepest dimension of that tradition, what one might call the heart of islam, in the sense too that in a very well-known hadith, that of Jibril (Gabriel), it is established that islam unfolds according to certain levels or degrees that could be entitled: “islam”, everything concerning the five pillars of islam; “iman”, everything at a subtler and deeper level concerning faith, something situated at the level of the heart; and then “ihsan”, which, the hadith says, “is to worship God as though you saw Him, for if you do not see Him, He sees you”, and which already lies at the heart of contemplation. So Sufism is nothing other than this contemplative level, and it is in no way a current or a movement about which one might ask “is it conforming or not?”; it is nothing other than one of the degrees of islam, and the deepest degree of that Tradition. Which translates as “a path towards proximity to God”.
And this path is the Sunna itself, since the Sunna is not a system fixed once and for all, formal and to which one need only adhere. Religion is a means of transforming oneself. It is therefore a path of transformation. That is why the Sunna, par excellence, is this path; it is the fact of evolving along this path towards an ever greater perfectioning called precisely “Makarim al-Akhlaq”, that is, the fact of perfecting one’s behaviour, one’s morals, of transforming this raw material that we are at the outset, and this is the very meaning of religion: transforming this raw material into an ever more refined, ever more purified, ever more illumined material, conforming to the fruits of the Sunna, which are all those behaviours of which the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) is the model par excellence.
How does one enter Sufism and become a Sufi? What are the particular practices of its disciples?
One need only look at the history of islam and know that beyond the common platform all Muslims share, which is that of the Sharia, there are schools of perfectioning and deepening, which may be of different kinds according to various sciences, among them the spiritual science which is that of Sufism. To join this school, there is a sort of “pact of companionship” established with a spiritual teacher who has himself been qualified by the teaching he received (this is the meaning of what are called the “chains of initiatic transmission”, the “Silsila”), who is himself authenticated by these chains, which are safeguards against every form of sectarianism and deviation, and who gives a teaching that allows one to enter the heart of this Sunna and the heart of the spirituality of islam. This happens essentially through practices of invocations, of dhikr. The Qur’an contains many passages stressing the importance of doing much dhikr, of mentioning God constantly, because in the end all deviations, of whatever kind, are what are called the deviations of heedlessness (ghafla), that is, the fact of letting oneself be carried away by “multiple waves” while losing that centrality of consciousness. Consciousness can only come through this dhikr, the act of invoking God. Through this invocation, a consciousness is born. There is a greater presence, a vigilance. It is said in the Qur’an, moreover: “Adhkuruni adhkurkum” (“remember Me, I will remember you”). So “being mentioned by God” means being restored to that consciousness and benefiting from His protection. This is done through a regular and intense practice of these invocations in multiple forms, individual or collective. This is what one learns through a Sufi path, notably for example the Qadiriya Boutchichiya, where the present teaching is dispensed through this Qadiriya path, which was founded in the twelfth century by Moulay Abdelkader al-Jilani (whose sanctuary in Baghdad is very famous), one of those great spiritual teachers. This path re-actualises that teaching today in a living and direct way.
What difference does living this spiritual approach in everyday life make for the disciples, and how do they manage to reconcile it with the demands of social life?
I think that nowadays more than ever, there is no time that could be exempt from this necessity; a spiritual practice is necessary. Because we are so challenged, so solicited towards multiple dispersions, that we could almost, in today’s society, be nothing more than a sort of “squeezed lemon”, pressed by all these solicitations towards different forms of consumption. In the end one loses one’s soul, because the solicitation makes us lose that inner consciousness, that inner choice, that inner freedom. Having a spiritual practice therefore restores us to that freedom or that choice; it allows us not to be simply subjected to these multiple, ever more sophisticated forces. Not that they are in themselves an intrinsic evil, but let us say that if we do not escape them, we become in a way their slave, whereas in reality man (the very meaning of islam) must be the slave of nothing other than God, that is, of the true Being, supreme and pure. Therein lies the meaning of his true freedom and his true responsibility. In that sense, I would say that present-day life even loses all its meaning without a spiritual practice; I would say that it is necessary and indispensable to be spiritual today, because otherwise we could never live a real life as human beings, a life of maturation and personal evolution, I would even say of fulfilment as human beings, if we lose this spiritual dimension. The point now is to realise that this is obviously never given easily (nothing in this domain is ever easy, even though it can be simple, since it is a matter precisely of education, a sort of combat; this is the meaning of the Greater Jihad, the jihad one wages upon oneself). For the greatest difficulty is not to overcome others, but to overcome oneself. This therefore requires a certain work, a certain inner discipline, a certain practice, which has the effect of freeing us, of making us more at peace, happier in the end. On that level, through this work one does upon oneself, there is a dimension of self-knowledge. In fact, to free oneself from one’s bad tendencies, one’s resistances, one’s conditionings and limitations, one has to know them, one has to be able to understand oneself and see where these various conditionings lie, so as actually to go beyond them, to get around them, to go further. This is what the Sufis call the famous “veils” that separate us from our deepest reality, that is, our “fitra”, our primordial nature, naturally religious and spiritual, and naturally “muslim” (in the etymological sense of the term), as the Qur’an and the hadith say. This spirituality in no way cuts us off from action in the world, because no such antinomy exists in the tradition of islam. That is what must be understood when islam insists that religion is “din wa dunya” (islam is religion and world), or that wisdom saying: “Live for this world as though you were to live in it forever, and for the hereafter as though you were to die tomorrow.” This twofold requirement is the very spirit of the religion of islam, and the spirit of the Sunna of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). That must never be forgotten. As is well known, the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) had, for entire nights or part of them, a very intense spiritual practice and, at the same time, he was a man who, within twenty-three years of preaching, changed the face of the world and accomplished what no man has accomplished. That is what must be kept in mind so as to see that this antagonism often spoken of between spirituality and temporality is precisely the equation that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) resolved, to answer the demands of our time.
The Sufis often speak of “mystical union”. Can it be attained through a Sufi approach?
One must be wary of terms which can sometimes lend themselves to confusion or ambiguous interpretations. It must not be forgotten that when one speaks of Sufism one speaks of “spiritual experience”, and like every experience, spiritual or not, it is always difficult to communicate in words, since it belongs to an intimate lived reality. So words always betray and can be misleading. What it is really about is simply “drawing near” (from the word “Muqarrabun” in the Qur’an, meaning “those brought near”). “Drawing near to God” is achieved through this work of stripping away all these dross, all that constitutes the veils in the relationship we have with God. The more direct, intimate and sincere this relationship is, the closer we are to God. In certain expressions of Sufi experience there is sometimes such a profound and subtle realisation of this Proximity that there is the feeling of being in a relation of extreme intimacy. That is what could be said when, at another level, that of the Prophets, it was said of Ibrahim (Abraham) that he is “Khalilullah”, “the intimate Friend of God”. What is an intimate friend if not someone to whom one is close with intensity? That is what is signified when it comes to the “Awliya’” (“the Saints”). The Qur’an says of the “Awliya’ Allah” (the “friends of God”): “Is it not true that the friends of God (or the allies of God) shall have no fear, nor shall they grieve…?”, that is, those whom God has taken into a covenant. And there again, what is a covenant? It is a proximity, a great proximity of relation, the very one that the Sufis have sometimes expressed in poetic or metaphysical terms, or in the form of aphorisms of wisdom, to express this spiritual state that, of course, no one can truly understand without having had, to one degree or another, the experience of it.
Are there many women in Sufism, and do they flourish there in the same way as men?
As often in the verses of the Qur’an, whenever certain characteristics of the believers are mentioned, it is said in both masculine and feminine terms (al-Mu’minun wa al-Mu’minat, al-Qanitun wa al-Qanitat…). And even when they are sometimes used only in the masculine, as in all grammar, this implies the feminine as much as the masculine gender. This dichotomous “feminine-masculine” expression was revealed in this way following a question (as with many verses revealed in different circumstances), when a woman called Nassiba went with a group of women to see the Prophet (may Prayer and Peace be upon him) to ask him about the place of women. The Revelation therefore said explicitly that “all that concerned men concerned women, and vice versa” in everything spiritual. This is also what history bore out: in Sufism there have been women who were among the founders of Sufism, who left an indelible mark upon it, since even today they remain present in the collective consciousness, through the teaching, the poetry, the spiritual books they wrote, the Hikam, and through their degrees of sanctity. Many names could be cited, but among the most famous let us mention: Rabi’a al-’Adawiyya, Fatima of Nishapur, Amina al-Ramiyya, etc. There are entire Tabaqat, classes of Sufis, reserved for women across the centuries.
Sufi practice requires the guidance of a Shaykh for a disciple. How does one choose one’s guide?
Everything begins there too with a personal search. When one undertakes a personal search, one begins by finding a whole set of signs along one’s path, which may be people, books, certain spiritual sayings that enlighten us on this or that aspect of our quest, until the day when all this guides us towards a person we recognise as an authentic teacher able, as the Sufis say, to help us and “take us by the hand” in life. But vigilance is required here, for it is absolutely not a question of a sect or of indoctrination in any form, but of an authentic teaching. It is a teaching that transforms us spiritually, towards greater maturity, freedom and lucidity. As has been said: “you will know them by their fruits”, and the fruits are precisely that! The fruits of Sufism are the fruits of the spiritual education of islam. From the moment one receives this kind of teaching, one experiences it in one’s most intimate experience, one convinces oneself of the authenticity of that teaching. And then it becomes the course of an entire lifetime, the very meaning of a lifetime: receiving this education and being transformed along this path.
Faouzi Skali: spiritual experience, part 2 in Le Matin du Sahara et du Maghreb
In yesterday’s edition we published the first part of the interview granted to us by Mr Faouzi Skali, doctor of anthropology, ethnology and religious sciences, on Sufism, on the margins of the conference to be held tomorrow, Saturday, in Fes on the theme “Sufism in contemporary society”.
In this second part, published today, Mr Faouzi Skali takes stock of the Sufi tariqa and the spiritual paths of islam.
If for some the Sufi approach conforms to the Sharia and the Sunna, what do you answer to those who dispute this conformity, notably concerning the hals, the hadra and the ecstatic dances, proclaiming that the Prophet never authorised nor initiated these practices?
There are errors of historical perspective that are classic in this domain. For if one referred, in the formal sense, strictly to what existed only at the time of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), all the other sciences should not exist: the science of hadith should not exist, since it only came afterwards; the science of Qur’anic exegesis came afterwards; Arabic grammar, which moreover was developed particularly by non-Arabs; even fiqh (jurisprudence), which has evolved and must evolve ceaselessly through time and take multiple forms answering the different requirements of each society and each era. That is why, simultaneously and in the same period, there have been schools of fiqh, all recognised as equally valid though different: the Maliki rite, the Hanbali rite, the Hanafi rite, the Shafi’i rite.
Although these schools do not resolve problems in the same way, they recognise one another as equally valid. This evolution, which stems from the Revelation’s own unfolding according to circumstances (Asbab al-Nuzul, and this takes nothing away from its sacrality and the eternity of the divine Word), is a manifest sign.
There is a share of social and historical contingency that the “pedagogy” of the Revelation teaches us.
As for “spiritual states” (hals), when the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) was at prayer, it is reported that his companions heard a noise in his breast, like “a boiling pot”, and when he received the Revelation there was something like a “humming of a swarm of bees”. Of course, the Revelation is specific to the Prophet, but the Prophet’s prayer was lived with such intensity on the inner plane that it aroused this “boiling”, which, contained though it was, was heard by those behind the Prophet. There were forms of hals, for example when the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said to Sidna Ja’far ibn Abi Talib (his nephew): “you resembled me in my conduct and my countenance”; the latter was so happy that he began to dance for joy on one foot. One has to know the effect the Prophet’s words had on each of his companions, to the point that after the Prophet’s death (peace and blessings be upon him), many of his companions lived simply because one day he had said this or that word to them, which had become a spiritual nourishment whose flame they kept with fervour. All these spiritual lived realities are realities of the Prophet’s time.
It was said of Abu Bakr that he had what looked like two furrows on his cheeks from weeping so much. That too is a form of “hal” (spiritual states). This lived reality of the heart is something extremely present and important at the time of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). Yet in periods of inner “dryness”, islam was made into a purely formal and external thing (which was far from the spirit of the Prophet), something denounced by great scholars such as Ghazali and many others.
Teachings are put in place to awaken this heart, to revivify it again; that is the meaning of the title of Ghazali’s book “Revivification of the sciences of religion”, that is, the revivification of the heart of Religion. At that point, through these practices, the heart reacts in a certain way, hence the hadra, the ecstatic states, etc., which can sometimes surprise in an era where that dimension has been lost, but which truly constitute the deepest and most important dimension of religion, without which religion could only be one formal system among others and would lose its spiritual dimension.
Among the hadiths that insisted on this dimension, let us cite: “God does not look at your forms and your acts, but looks into your hearts”, or again “there is in the body a ‘piece of flesh…’ (which symbolises the heart): if this piece of flesh is sound, the whole body is sound; if it is not sound, the whole body is corrupt”. And certain hadiths indicate that times will come when one will see many people praying in the most formal and adequate manner possible, but in reality none of that will conform to a genuine spirituality.
That is why Sufism today is not simply something marginal to be reflected upon, but truly constitutes the heart of the tradition of islam. And when it is a matter of “returning” to islam, as one often hears said, it is not a question of leaping over history or turning back time (which is obviously impossible and does not correspond to the “Sunna” of God, to the rules God instituted…); it is a question of returning to the heart of this tradition, from which it is lived in its true signification and authenticity.
Are all the tariqa calling themselves Sufi really so?
In the Sufi paths, there is what happens with all things. In the end, islam came because God considered that a certain deviation had been made by men. The Sufi paths are subject to the same rules: one can say that after a certain time, when they lose their original vitality, they can be perverted, diverted from their meaning. But that does not mean that the path itself is intrinsically called into question. It is the law of a certain necessary decline of all that exists in this world. For a path to continue to hold its first meaning, it must be re-actualised, revivified. That is what the spiritual guides of the Sufi paths do, coming to re-actualise this teaching from time to time. That is what is called “the Tajdid”. There is a hadith that says “at each cycle, someone will come to revivify and renew the things of this religion”. It is of course not a matter of renewing the arcana, since the Sunna is intangible and current whatever the era, but of renewing the spirit of religion, the spirituality.
That is indeed something one loses too easily, because it is a matter of a consciousness that one may or may not have.
To be able to revive this consciousness, one must have a teacher able to do it. For this teaching to have this effect, it must be given by someone who is himself within this spirituality. Hence the importance and the role of spiritual teachings throughout the history of islam. Many spiritual personalities who played a major role can be cited: Abdelkader Jilani, Abdessalam ibn Mashish, Abu’l-Hasan al-Shadhili, Ahmad al-Tijani, Moulay al-’Arbi al-Darqawi, Ibn ’Arabi, Rumi, and many others… In the end, that is how the truth and authenticity of a spiritual teaching are realised, and that is what distinguishes one path from another. To what degree is such a path alive, current, in full spiritual efficacy, able to communicate a genuine spiritual teaching? The difference between the paths is not formal; it is a difference in degree of vitality.
So there are paths which, though they lose the presence of the spiritual teachings that founded them, continue to maintain themselves within a certain dimension that remains a “spiritual culture” (these are called the paths of “tabarruk”), and there are paths that have this dimension of presence and actuality, quite real at a given moment, communicated through a teacher and a living spiritual teaching. These are called the paths of initiation and spiritual education.
Be that as it may, Sufism impregnates and has impregnated the general climate of the different societies and cultures of Islamic civilisation. Today, obviously, it takes forms that are not those of the past, but that are no less linked to its tradition. It is an actualised and living tradition.
What are the great and true spiritual paths of islam in our era, in Morocco and throughout the world?
I can only speak from my experience: I know that at present the Qadiriya Boutchichiya path gives a teaching in Morocco as in the world at large. It is recognised internationally as one of the great paths. And there has been no example in history of a path reaching this degree of diffusion and recognition without having subsequently been truly regarded as one of the great moments of Sufism. I believe this consensus around a path is a determining element of its recognition and its role.
Le Matin du Sahara et du Maghreb, Friday 3 March 2000, no. 10,634
Interview by Marc Boudet.
Further reading
- Sufism and islam: what is the difference?
- Finding a Sufi master in France
- East and West: Sufism as a bridge
