SPECIAL PROBLEMS IN THE STUDY OF SUFI IDEAS - IDRIES SHAH

Hard to know if I can count this one. This book is incredibly short, a couple page intro,  25 pages of main text followed by somewhat extensive notes and a brief Rumi translation. I was expecting a more in depth exploration of Sufism, a subject I would like to know much more about. The book itself is a response to a very unique set of circumstances and a very specific complaint. The book was published in ‘66, during a period where Westerners were going through one of our periodic obsessions with the “mysterious East.” And into the same stew that included astrology, the tarot, crystals, various new age activities, meditation and buddhism, yoga and a host of other “ancient” practices these new spiritual seekers were adding in Sufism, which they perceived, generally, as an enlightened and ecstatic version of Islam. Shah’s main complaint is the cafeteria catholic style approach to the Sufi tradition. As he puts it, “Sufism... is not there for people to adopt pieces of it which appeal to them, in the order and manner which pleases them. It is there to be learnt, by its own methods and in the order and manner which the Sufi phenomenon itself requires.”You have to approach Sufism with the Sufi prescribed method, which involves a teacher and lived experience and is at odds with the Western idea that “all knowledge must surely be available in books.” Shah insists these books, even ancient texts written by Sufi scholars themselves, are not the arbitrators of Sufism, instead, “Sufi ideas are in varying degrees contained in the background and studies of up to 40 million people alive today: those connected with sufism.” Because the book is so short, and since he’s against the idea of books as authority in general, he doesn’t go into what Sufism actually is, though he does raise a number of interesting lines of inquiry. He suggests that Sufism, german coinage from 1821, has no etymology (he dismisses the popular conception that it’s related to the word for “wool” which refers to the garments of Sufi ascetics) but instead might be connected to Dhikr chanting of the letters Soad, Wao, Fa which would sound like SSSSSOOOOOFFFFF. He seems to believe that Sufism is not a branch of Islam but rather a mystical tradition that predates Islam and has influence over a vast array of cultural/religious phenomena. He quotes Ibn el-Farid as saying, “Our wine existed before what you call the grape and the vine,” which is a very interesting and far-out idea I wish he got more into. He also, as I said, credits Sufism as being the inspiration or exerting influence on a vast number of ideas. Here’s a short list: chivalry, alchemy, Guru Nanak (founder of sikhism), Hindu Vedantist teaching, Western magik and occultism, the theory of evolution, Yezidism, Gurdieff, the Troubadours, William Tell, Shakespeare, Hans Christian Anderson, Japanese Zen Buddhism, Dante, Chaucer, to name only a few. I wish the book had been longer to go into this stuff more in detail. Finally, it had good shot at the neoliberal idea that everything can be reduced to a “useful” self-help program, “People who need the psychological prop are not primarily learners, they are often in need of therapy first. Sufism is not a therapy, it is a teaching.” Shots fired. Cool book but I’m still in the market for a general Sufism book, if anyone knows a good one, I’m all ears. 1811 whirling dancers