Sufi sm and ‘Popular’ Islam 127More signifi cantly, Snouck Hurgronje observed that, contrary to what earlier
Western observers had claimed, the ulama and the Sufi s did not represent
incompatible religious traditions in rivalry with one another. Several of the most
learned ulama of Mecca were themselves practising Sufi s, and few if any were
opposed to Sufi sm and the Sufi orders as such, even if they criticised certain
specifi c practices. He even perceived that the changing political circumstances
- rapid expansion of Western infl uence and dramatic decline of the political
power of Muslim polities – were causing an increasingly positive appreciation
of the Sufi orders among the ulama. Whereas political leaders were reluctant
to come to the defence of Islam, it was the shaykhs of popular Sufi orders who
showed themselves capable of mobilising ‘fanatical’ masses for that purpose
(Snouck Hurgronje 1931: 203–5). Snouck Hurgronje’s interest in the orders
concerned specifi cally their anti-colonial potential. In the following decades, he
was himself to become perhaps the most prominent representative of scholar-
ship in the service of colonial interests and the most sophisticated contributor
to what has been termed the ‘littérature de surveillance’, the security-oriented
study of Muslim societies.^2
What is a Sufi order?
In the paragraphs above, two controversial aspects of Sufi orders were men-
tioned: quaint devotional practices and a potential for social mobilisation,
possibly of an anti-colonial nature. It is time for a more systematic discussion.
There are a number of ways of defi ning what a Sufi order is. Each order is, in
principle, a distinctive spiritual discipline (the term tariqa literally means ‘path’),
and has its own repertoire of dhikr, prayers, litanies and spiritual techniques,
which may to some extent overlap with those of other orders. The dhikr (literally
remembrance) or chanting of God’s names and other short formulas may be
silent or loud, combined with specifi c breathing techniques, bodily movements
and meditation exercises; it may or may not be deliberately trance-inducing and
produce insensitivity to pain. Other spiritual exercises include various forms of
contemplation and listening to music and poetry.
Most orders are named after a founding saint, and the distinctive prayers and
techniques are commonly believed to have been handed down from the founder
of the order along a chain of successors to the current teacher. Each member of
an order is thus connected by a chain of teachers (silsila or spiritual genealogy) to
the founder of the order and from him onward up to the Prophet Muhammad.
Different Sufi orders, in this view, represent different aspects of Muhammad’s
spiritual teachings, and the names of the saints in a particular silsila give an indi-
cation of the type of spirituality the order stands for. The silsila is not only impor-
tant in that it legitimates and guarantees the authenticity of the tariqa’s spiritual
discipline; it also stands for an ongoing possibility of spiritual communication.