126 Islam and Modernity
Western observers and the reform of Sufi practices
Western observers with some degree of knowledge of classical Sufi literature con-
curred with the reformers that Sufi sm was dramatically in decline and that many
practices that went by its name were decadent survivals that appealed mainly
to the uneducated and were due to disappear once modern education had been
spread. In his famous work on life in Egypt in the 1830s, Edward Lane ([1836]
1860: ch. X) discussed the rituals of the various Sufi orders in a chapter on
‘superstitions’. Several orders had rituals in which their members handled poi-
sonous snakes, pierced themselves with knives and skewers or engaged in other
forms of violence against the self in order to show their invulnerability. The most
spectacular public performance, which Lane (ibid.: 451–3, 468–70) described at
length, was the doseh (dawsa), at which the shaykh of the Sadiyya order rode on
horseback over hundreds of his prostrate disciples, who claimed they suffered no
harm because of the powerful prayers they recited. Under European diplomatic
pressure, and applauded by Muslim reformists including Abduh, the khedive
Tawfi q prohibited the doseh in 1881, and it has not been performed in Egypt since
(De Jong 1978: 94–6). Interestingly, Lane relates that more than a half century
earlier the shaykh himself had already wanted to discontinue the practice but
had had to yield to pressure from his followers, who wished to maintain it.
The Dutch scholar Snouck Hurgronje (1931: 176–9), who spent fi ve months
in Mecca in 1885 observing the ‘Jawah’ community there (residents and pil-
grims from South East Asia), gives an amusing account of a confl ict between
two shaykhs of the Naqshbandi order, Sulayman Zuhdi and Khalil Pasha, who
competed for the clientele of simple Malay and Turkish pilgrims. For many
of these pilgrims, a written ijaza or proof of initiation, issued in Mecca, was a
desirable asset to take home, and both shaykhs issued such documents on a
large scale. Like fl ocks of sheep ready to be shorn – as Snouck Hurgronje notes,
emphasising that this was also an economic enterprise – groups of unsophisti-
cated pilgrims were induced into their zawiya (Sufi lodge) and given a brief train-
ing in the prayers and techniques of the order, after which they were sent home
with the desired ijaza without having learnt anything signifi cant. Neither shaykh
cared whether his disciples had basic knowledge of the teachings of scriptural
Islam – or so at least their detractors claimed. In their fi ght over these ‘fl ocks
of sheep’, the shaykhs wrote pamphlets accusing one another of teaching unac-
ceptable practices, and one of them had the local authorities intervene on his
behalf. Snouck Hurgronje did not hide his scorn for these popular Sufi teachers,
probably echoing the opinion of ulama with whom he spoke. By contrast, he
expressed much respect for another Naqshbandi teacher in Mecca, the learned
Muhammad Salih al-Zawawi, who did not cater to the vulgar masses but taught
a sober variety of mysticism to a select number of students who were already
well advanced in Islamic learning.