132 Islam and Modernity
The charismatic and zealous Mawlana Khalid had introduced some changes
in ritual that strengthened the bond between disciple and master even further,
and he appointed a large number of deputies (khalifa) to various districts of
Kurdistan as well as other parts of the Ottoman Empire, including Mecca.
Most of these khalifa in turn appointed their own deputies, resulting in a dense,
centralised network, held together by strong master–disciple ties. Several
older branches of the Naqshbandiyya as well as the Qadiriyya reoriented
themselves towards Shaykh Khalid and were also integrated into the network
(Abu-Manneh 1982; Bruinessen 1992). The Khalidiyya distinguished itself
by a strong emphasis on Sunni orthodoxy, a hostile attitude towards Shiism,
concern about increasing European infl uence and an inclination to political
activism – which in times of insecurity no doubt added to its success. Ottoman
administrative reforms, perceived to be due to European pressure, were upset-
ting Kurdish society, resulting in an increase of tribal confl icts, which gave some
of the Khalidiyya shaykhs the occasion to act as mediators and peace-brokers
(and thereby to gain considerable worldly infl uence). Under their leadership,
narrow tribal loyalties were overcome and the beginnings of a Kurdish national
awareness emerged.
The controversy about Neo-Sufi sm
The militant movements described in the preceding section, in which Sufi
orders appeared to be playing a central role, suggest that a number of signifi cant
changes were taking place more or less simultaneously all over the Muslim world.
Several prominent scholars, including Fazlur Rahman and John O. Voll, noted
a number of other new developments in Sufi sm besides the increased militancy,
and coined the term ‘Neo-Sufi sm’, defi ned loosely as ‘Sufi sm reformed on ortho-
dox lines and interpreted in an activist sense’.^6 This phenomenon was most typi-
cally observed in the new orders that emerged in North Africa in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, the Tijaniyya and the orders deriving from Ahmad b.
Idris (Sanusiyya, Ahmadiyya, Idrisiyya, Khatmiyya, Rashidiyya). These orders
differed from the ‘classical’ Sufi orders in that their founders did not trace their
spiritual genealogies through long lines of predecessors but claimed to have a
direct spiritual relationship with the Prophet.^7 Fazlur Rahman (1979: 206), fol-
lowed by many later authors, perceived that these Neo-Sufi orders ‘rejected the
idea of a union with God and postulated instead a union with the spirit of the
Prophet Muhammad’ – presumably part of the reform on orthodox lines. Voll
(1982: 36–9 and passim) claimed that Neo-Sufi s reformulated Ibn Arabi’s ideas
in less pantheistic terms, with greater emphasis on God’s transcendence, and he
observed that many of them held a strong interest in hadith studies in common
with puritan reformers such as the Wahhabis.
The concept of ‘Neo-Sufi sm’ was subjected to scathing criticism in an