152 Islam and Modernity
thorough study of the relevant Arabic sources (and highly critical of both Gellner
and Geertz), is Vincent Cornell’s Realm of the Saint (1998). Cogent criticism of
Gellner’s treatment of Sufi sm is also offered by Henry Munson (1993: esp. ch. 4)
and Sami Zubaida (1995). A sweeping critique of Geertz’s and Gellner’s
anthropological representation of Islam more generally is Varisco (2005).- I adopt these terms from Buehler (1998), who distinguishes these two types of
shaykh in the Indian Naqshbandiyya and believes the mediating shaykh to be a
relatively recent (nineteenth-century) phenomenon in this order. The great
Naqshbandi shaykhs of earlier centuries had been directing shaykhs, and so were
the revivalists and reformists of the Deoband school (established in 1867), who
sharply distinguished themselves from the mediating shaykhs and shrine cults of
the Barelvi movement, the traditionalist and popular mainstream in Indian Islam. - Geertz (1968: 49, 51–2) does mention Moroccan Sufi orders as one of three
institutional settings in which the genealogical concept of sanctity is expressed
and notes that by 1939 nearly a fi fth of Moroccan adults were affi liated with one
order or the other but provides no further discussion. - In an interesting revision of secularisation theory in a perspective of systems
theory and globalisation, Peter Beyer (2006) argues that functional differentiation
entails not only the increasing separation of religion from other functional domains
(the market, medicine, education, etc.) but also the emergence of an autonomous
religious domain. - Gilsenan (1982: 229–50) himself already noticed this when he revisited Egypt
during the period of ‘opening’ under Sadat; later studies by Hoffman (1995),
Johansen (1996) and Chih (2000) document the fl ourishing of Sufi sm as a public
discourse and the social signifi cance of the Sufi orders. - Saktanber (2002) is based on research in a housing estate affi liated with this
order. On sohbet and other forms of disciplining as well as the foundations, see
Silverstein (2007). - On the founder of the Nur movement, Said Nursi, and his ambivalent relationship
with the established Sufi orders, see the excellent study by Mardin (1989). The
Gülen movement is the subject of a rapidly increasing number of academic
studies, e.g. Yavuz and Esposito (2003). - On Iqbal and Sufi sm, see Annemarie Schimmel’s empathetic study (1963) and
Sirriyeh (1999: 124–37). The infl uence of Rumi on Soroush’s thought is evident in
the numerous quotations in his major writings (e.g. Soroush 2000). - Johansen (1996: 25–6) quotes comments of the late-nineteenth-century
Egyptian journalist al-Nadim expressing shame at what foreign observers might
think when watching popular Sufi practices. Almost a century later, an article
in a contemporary Egyptian newspaper expressed similar feelings of shame at
the ecstatic behaviour at a mawlid that had become a tourist attraction (ibid.:
164). - Shaykh Nazim has authorised certain khalifas to teach the whirling dance (semah)
of the Mevlevi order, and at least one khalifa teaches a combination of Qadiri,
Naqshbandi and Mevlevi techniques. - Signs containing a long list of ‘superstitious’ beliefs and actions that are forbidden
have been put up, for instance, at the shrine of Eyüp Sultan in Istanbul
(Bruinessen 2005) and that of Baha’ al-din Naqshband in Bukhara (Zarcone
1995). - There is a growing literature on the emergence of Alevism as a modern religious