Sufism

Abstract

While the term “Sufism” has long been used within the academic literature to define the mystic dimension of Islam, later works have questioned the orientalizing tendencies of such a definition and have shown the deep interconnectedness of the phenomenon with social and political change in modern times. After an overview of the history of the term and how it has been employed in seminal sociological and anthropological scholarship, the entry illustrates how a new body of literature has explored the interconnectedness between Sufism and modernity from different perspectives. It mainly explains Sufism's resilience as a result of the flexibility of its foundational pedagogical and intersubjective patterns. Moreover, it highlights this particular tradition's capacity for recreating connectivity at a translocal level, as well as for offering replies to questions that, though framed partly in new ways, address long‐standing human problems.