Sufi sm and ‘Popular’ Islam 133article by O’Fahey and Radtke (1993), which gave rise to an extended series of
exchanges.^8 The critics claimed that many of the allegedly new ideas in ‘Neo-
Sufi sm’ could already be found in the earliest Sufi authors, and that certain
alleged aspects of ‘Neo-Sufi sm’ (such as the shift from efforts to achieve unity
with God to imitation of the Prophet) appeared to exist mostly in the imagina-
tion of observers. The label of ‘Neo-Sufi sm’ was, moreover, applied to a wide
range of Sufi s and Sufi movements that had little in common with one another,
and the various traits attributed to it did not usually appear in combination. The
anti-colonial militancy attributed to the ‘Neo-Sufi ’ orders owed much to selec-
tive perception by colonial administrators and unwarranted generalisation from
a few cases. In fact, in most places and times the Tijaniyya cooperated cordially
with the French authorities rather than opposing them, and mutatis mutandis the
same applied for some of the other ‘Neo-Sufi ’ orders elsewhere. Knysh (2002)
argues along similar lines that the militancy attributed to the Naqshbandiyya in
the Caucasus was due to misrepresentation by Russian administrators; the order
certainly was a factor in the resistance but neither its driving force nor its major
organising structure.
The debate on Neo-Sufi sm has been useful in breaking through facile gen-
eralisations and the uncritical repetition of unproven assumptions; but even the
strongest critics of the concept admit that there is something very specifi c espe-
cially to the new North African orders. The debate has also drawn attention to
the complex relationship between Sufi sm and puritan reformism and has shown
that these are not so incompatible as had long been assumed. Recent research
has brought to light various forms of accommodation between Salafi sm and
Sufi sm (Weismann 2000, 2005; Villalón 2007). It does not appear very helpful
to lump them all together under the label of ‘Neo-Sufi sm’ (as some authors do),
but it is important to notice that there are Sufi s with Salafi attitudes as well as
Salafi s with a strong Sufi bend.
Quite a few leading reformists appeared not only to have a family background
with strong Sufi connections or a personal prior experience with a Sufi order,
but to have been inspired by certain Sufi ideas without perceiving this to be in
confl ict with their Salafi reformist convictions. Several decades ago, George
Makdisi (1974) provocatively claimed he could prove that even Ibn Taymiyya,
the authoritative reference for all Salafi currents, was ‘a Sufi of the Qadiriyya
order’. Other scholars fi rmly reject Makdisi’s interpretation (e.g. Meier 1999:
317–18), but it is clear that Ibn Taymiyya was not the Sufi -basher for whom
he has sometimes been taken and that he in fact showed many Sufi s respect.
Of course Makdisi did not mean that Ibn Taymiyya condoned the ‘popular’
practices for which the Qadiriyya is known. But in his works he does speak with
respect of various Sufi s of preceding centuries, many of whom were affi liated
with this order, and modern Sufi apologists claim to fi nd in Ibn Taymiyya’s
works support for certain Sufi practices.^9