23.11.08
Review of The Other Islam
I wrote an Amazon review of Stephen Schwarz’ The Other Islam. I hope it appears (my reviews are almost always posted immediately, but certain subject matters are automatically flagged for review) So if it doesn’t appear, here it is/was: the author hardly deserves this review, but it is hard to pass judgment on Islamic sufism.
Sufism, and its histories, November 23, 2008
By John C. Landon “nemonemini” (New York City) – See all my reviewsDoes sufism exist? I was assured, years ago, by a known sufi that it doesn’t, and that there are no sufis.
This work is of use in trying to reconstruct the history of so-called ’sufism’, which has more historical than cultic/organizational meaning. Many westerners proceed blind down the garden path, as it were, without knowing what they are dealing with, to discover the many frauds, occultists, fanatics, and others in sufistic colors claiming a legacy that is apparently mostly smoke and mirrors. One is thus driven to study sufism in its Islamic context to see if this is an aberration, or if Islamic sufism conceals the same, or if Islamic sufis actually grasp what they are dealing with.
The record is hard to set straight and a new generation should be warned of the corruption of the phenomenon of sufism, at least in the West, and grasp the issue that ’sufism’ is a history of certain people, not a movement, or method, and that its great decline has spawned a kind of mafia of shadow devils, witness Gurdjieff who openly admitted to it. The crucial issue is to maintain one’s autonomy and proceed beyond the spurious authority of shaykhs to a self-created way without the huckstered barakas of black magicians preying on the ’sufi’ Faust.
This book, although it looks suspiciously like a crypto-political piece of some kind (maybe a State Department stealth op), is useful enough as a perspective on ’sufistic’ history, but beyond that correct information about sufism does not exist. Therefore be wary until that information does exist.