The experience of Sufism today in the West
Contents
Whenever the great spiritual traditions of humanity come up in the media, Sufism is almost always mentioned. In a West searching for meaning, one has to acknowledge that Sufism arouses a significant and growing interest. Yet if it attracts, even fascinates, this tradition raises deep questions for Western seekers. Is it possible for this path of wisdom, which necessarily stands within the perspective of Islam, to be genuinely accessible, in all its dimensions, to a Frenchman, a Spaniard or an American? Isn’t some degree of acculturation inevitable, acceptable only to a tiny minority? In other words, can this tradition answer the expectations of Western men and women looking for meaning, for plenitude in their lives? The testimonies of several French people following the teachings of the Qadiriya Boutchichiya brotherhood offer a way into these questions, and a glimpse of the living bond now being woven between a centuries-old spiritual tradition, hitherto confined more or less to the Oriental and African world, and Westerners whose only distinguishing feature is an intense search for the essential.
The fear of confinement
Bertrand, 26, a medical student, remembers his discovery of Sufism. Put in touch with this teaching through a friend, he confides: ‘As much as the message of Sufism touched me, involving myself personally in a path where there were practices of a religious nature bothered me a great deal.’ The fear of confinement, of a loss of freedom, was common to many of those interviewed. Patrick, 23, also feared joining ‘an isolated group where fanatical deviations might come out’.
Several testimonies speak of a dilemma between an aspiration towards this path of wisdom, sometimes experienced as irrepressible, and strong reservations linked in particular to the religious implications of such a wayfaring. Bertrand explains that his fears gradually dissipated on seeing that this kind of path ‘in no way asked one to break with one’s usual framework of life, and that it was solely a matter of transforming inner perception’.
‘Contact with the Sufi disciples,’ he adds, ‘was also decisive, for I then discovered a form of brotherhood I had never seen before. In meeting these disciples, I saw people struck by this teaching with startling intensity. There I understood that it was an approach that addressed the heart. I saw people flooded with love whose behaviour showed they were not attached to rigid, external principles, but that they were all seeking divine love. Through them, prayers no longer appeared to me as duties to be accomplished or as a body of rules, but as an energy of love.’
Spirituality and Western culture
Clearly, the French disciples seek to live their teaching fully while working with the realities of Western society. ‘It isn’t a matter of reproducing the way of life of this or that Sufi community from another continent or another era than our own,’ Patrick specifies. ‘Any attitude copied from a model remote from our own culture would in fact be artificial and unsuited to the environment in which we live. The spirit of the path does not lie in the spectacular or the external, just as it steers clear of anything that might create needless misunderstandings or antagonisms. This path of wisdom is also a path of love for beings, notably through a genuine culture and a genuine respect for the other.’
And Gilbert, 43, an administrative manager, continues: ‘The forms, the cultural clothes that Sufism has been able to take on over time are manifold. But in fact this tradition roots itself in the interiority of men and women, well beyond such contingencies. In Sufism, each person’s cultural baggage must not be refused. The approach aims at going beyond that plane, not at negating it; Western culture can and even must be regarded as a wealth. The stakes lie elsewhere: experiencing a dimension of the sacred, here and now, with what we are, in our daily environment.’
‘This discrimination between the cultural and the spiritual can sometimes take subtle forms,’ explains Robert, 69, retired. ‘Our attitude towards others, for example, our way of acting day to day, cannot be dissociated from our spiritual experience. If behaviour expresses to a certain extent what is perceived on the plane of interiority, it is at the same time a privileged means of becoming aware of everything in us that calls for clarification or detachment. The values of simplicity, hospitality, generosity and modesty found among Eastern Sufis must not be perceived as merely cultural. In fact they nourish and express a sacralised relation to the other. In that sense they have a genuinely spiritual dimension.’
Even though we live in a society whose customs and behaviours are very different from those Sufis may have known throughout history, the notion of courtesy (adab), which in Sufism carries the sense of rightness and refinement of conduct, thus remains highly relevant today.
Striving daily, through a look, a word, a gesture, to give every being, whoever it may be, the respect and consideration due to it is indeed a means of awakening in its own right, an intimate reminder that behind every creature stands the Creator.
A crisis of acculturation overcome
For Hervé, the discrimination between the spiritual and the cultural came very gradually. At the beginning of his wayfaring, the question even took the form of a deep crisis. Though he had been ‘touched in the heart’ by the Sufi message and had committed himself, he later wondered whether this teaching was really made for him: ‘It took me some time before performing the ritual practices in Arabic stopped sending back to me the image of a world that appeared now exotic, now irreducibly foreign to my personal universe. I sometimes felt as though I had landed on another plane. Several times I caught myself thinking: “But what are you doing here?”’
‘I wasn’t calling the authenticity of the teaching into question; I was even convinced of its profound worth, which incidentally made still harder the feeling I had of being a stranger to all of it. I then felt I had to hang on… I gradually realised that this fear of acculturation corresponded to nothing founded: it only masked my difficulty in truly letting go inwardly. Unconsciously, I had there a fine pretext for not facing the fears and conditionings that dwelt in me and that the teaching revealed. It was both through perseverance, a combat against myself and a form of surrender that my outlook gradually changed. Today I believe this path is not only accessible to the modern mind and way of life, but more still, that it is suited to them. That said, it is true that beyond this compatibility of form, fundamental from a certain point of view, the spiritual approach is demanding: it implies deep work on oneself and mobilises the whole being.’
Sufism is not a psychotherapy
In this respect, Jacques, 47, a doctor, specifies that the Sufi path must not be confused with a psychotherapy: ‘The Sufis themselves have often been presented as physicians of the soul. And indeed Sufism integrates the most essential form of healing there is: inner healing. It is interesting to note that in traditional societies there is no opposition between the different medicines treating the various planes of the human being: physical, emotional, psychological… However, complementary though they are, they are not for all that confused. Thus a person suffering from psychological difficulties that are too great must above all be helped at that level. Spiritual teaching can sometimes prove destabilising, for it confronts each person with what he is and operates as a mirror, thanks to which deep self-questioning takes place. All of this is part of a process of inner pacification, of opening to an ever more real balance; but a person not psychologically disposed to go through such questioning would not draw full benefit from these approaches.’
‘In fact, I believe one has to be ready, and that is ultimately linked neither to age, nor to one’s inner state, still less to any baggage in terms of reading or experiences in the field of spirituality. More fundamentally, it seems to me, everything depends on the individual’s request and need. Is that person seeking to recover psychological well-being? To what extent is he ready to invest himself in this search? Those, I think, are the crucial points that allow us to distinguish a person whose need is of a psychotherapeutic order from one who is called by a spiritual teaching.’
Raphaël Feur
