166 DESTINY DISRUPTED
Yet Sufi brotherhoods also differed in crucial ways from monastic or-
ders. For one thing, every monastic order had a set of strict rules that
monks or nuns had to follow, under the direction of an abbot or abbess.
Sufi brotherhoods were much looser and more informal, more about com-
panionship and less about externally imposed discipline.
Furthermore, taking the vows of any of the Christian monastic orders
meant renunciation of the world and some commitment to "mortification
of the flesh." That's because Christianity focused essentially on personal
salvation, and saw salvation as something people needed because they were
born guilty of "original sin," the discovery of sexuality in the Garden of
Eden. For this sin, humanity had been sentenced to imprisonment in bod-
ies that lived (and died) in the material world.
Monks or nuns joined an order specifically to separate themselves from
the world, the emblem of man's fallen state. Their devotions were aimed at
punishing their bodies, because the body was the problem. They practiced
celibacy as a matter of course, because Christianity saw spirituality as the
remedy for sexuality.
In Islam, however, the emphasis was not on the personal salvation of
the isolated soul but on construction of the perfect community. People
were not sinners to be saved but servants enjoined to obedience. They
were born innocent and capable of ascent to the highest nobility but also
of descent to the lowest depravity.^2 The mureeds in a Sufi order joined
up not to be saved but to attain a higher state; their rituals were aimed
not at punishing their bodies but at focusing their energies on Allah
alone; if they fasted, for instance, it was not to mortify their flesh but to
strengthen their self-discipline. They saw no equation between celibacy
and spirituality and did not separate from the world. Sufis and would-be
Sufis usually plied trades, bought and sold, married, reared children, and
went to war.
In fact, some Sufi brotherhoods evolved into bands of mystical knights,
espousing an ethos called fotuwwah, which resembled the European code of
knightly valor, courtly love, and chivalric honor. Whether the influence ran
from west to east, or vice versa, or both ways is a dispute I won't get into.
In any case, Sufis illustrated futuwwah ideals through mytho-poetic
anecdotes about Muslim heroes of the first community. One such story,
for example, told of a young traveler arrested for killing an old man. The