138 Islam and Modernity
places Sufi sm squarely in the category of ‘Low Islam’, the religion of the masses,
and in opposition to ‘High Islam’, the religion of the scholars. Characteristic of
his ‘Low Islam’ or ‘Folk Islam’ are ecstatic rituals, magical practices and media-
tion, and the cult of saints constitutes its very core. ‘High Islam’ allegedly rejects
mediation and is focused on scripture and the strict execution of religious obliga-
tions. The tribal raids on the city are not led by the saints, however; as Gellner
has it, such raids occur when puritan preachers, who represent a radical version
of urban Islam and condemn the moral decline of the townspeople, conclude a
coalition with the tribes in order to restore moral purity to the city.^14
Transcendentalism versus immanentism
In a little-known, thought-provoking paper, Robert Bellah (1970) offered a dif-
ferent analysis of the dynamic relationship between Sufi sm and anti-Sufi sm,
reminiscent of Hume’s ideas on the oscillation of theism and polytheism though
not of Gellner’s adaptation of it. Bellah analysed the emergence of Islam in the
seventh century as a movement of radical secularisation, because of its rejection
of virtually all institutions that had previously been held as sacred: the gods,
priesthood and the established political and social order, including the tribe
and extended family, and so on. The Islamic revelation asserted the equality of
all men before God and rejected all forms of mediation between man and God
(apart from the prophets in their role as messengers). In its rejection of media-
tion, Bellah argued, Islam presaged the Protestant revolution in Christianity:
every Muslim was to be his own priest.
Islam was a latecomer among the great monotheistic religions, and it was
already carrying in itself the seeds of a later phase of religious evolution. The
radical secularisation (understood as disenchantment of the world) that accom-
panied early Islam, Bellah suggested, was well ahead of its time and clashed with
the social realities of the societies that were to become part of the Muslim world.
Sacred institutions soon reappeared, and new forms of mediation became insti-
tutionalised in response to social demand. This introduced into the history of
Islam and of Muslim societies an inherent tension between the societal demand
for the re-enchantment of the world (or for retention of its enchanted nature)
and the puritan urge to restore the extreme transcendentalism of early Islam.
Movements for reform (islah) or renewal (tajdid ) – in Bellah’s terms, movements
of secularisation, in the sense of rejection of charisma, of mediation and of the
sacral character of persons, places and objects – have been inherent in Islam
since well before the modern period (see Voll 1983). Bellah mentioned notably
the rise of Sufi sm, from the tenth century onwards, as the victorious return of
the sacred and the idea of mediation into the heart of Islam. Sufi sm and puritan
reformism are presented as opposite poles in Islam, alternating with one another
as the dominant form of Muslim belief and practice. The central characteristic
of what Bellah calls Sufi sm is the re-enchantment of the world, notably (the belief