- Karen Armstrong
had its roots in the asceticism (zuhd) that developed during
the Umayyad period as a reaction against the growing world-
liness and luxury of Muslim society. It was an attempt to get
back to the primitive simplicity of the ummah when all Mus-
lims had lived as equals. The ascetics often wore the kind of
coarse woollen garment (tasawwuf) that was standard among
the poor, as the Prophet had done. By the early ninth century
the term tasawwuf (which gives us our "Sufi") had become
synonymous with the mystical movement that was slowly de-
veloping in Abbasid society.
Sufism was also probably a reaction against the growth of
jurisprudence, which seemed to some Muslims to be reduc-
ing Islam to a set of purely exterior rules. Sufis wanted to re-
produce within themselves that state of mind that made it
possible for Muhammad to receive the revelations of the
Quran. It was his interior islam that was the true foundation of
the law, rather than the usul al-fiqh of the jurists. Where estab-
lishment Islam was becoming less tolerant, seeing the Quran
as the only valid scripture and Muhammad's religion as the
one true faith, Sufis went back to the spirit of the Quran in
their appreciation of other religious traditions. Some, for ex-
ample, were especially devoted to Jesus, whom they saw as
the ideal Sufi since he had preached a gospel of love. Others
maintained that even a pagan who prostrated himself before a
stone was worshipping the Truth (al-haqq) that existed at the
heart of all things. Where the ulama and the jurists were in-
creasingly coming to regard revelation as finished and com-
plete, the Sufis, like the Shiis, were constantly open to the
possibility of new truths, which could be found anywhere,
even in other religious traditions. Where the Quran described
a God of strict justice, Sufis, such as the great woman ascetic
Rabiah (d. 801), spoke of a God of love.
All over the world and in every major faith tradition, men
and women who have a talent for this type of interior journey
have developed certain techniques that enable them to enter