Islam Rejects Mysticism

Islam Rejects Mysticism

There are two types of Sufism: authentic and pseudo, or theosophical, Sufism. Authentic Sufism is a product of Islam alone and is nothing else but the quintessence of orthodox Islam. Pseudo, or theosophical, Sufism, on the other hand, is an abominable innovation which was influenced by alien-to-Islam worldviews and traditions.

One of the widely articulated misconceptions about Sufism is that it is identifiable with mysticism. However, mysticism preceded the existence of Sufism by centuries and even millennia, and its various forms and expressions could be traced back to almost every religious as well as philosophical tradition known to man. Those traditions signify either distorted versions of once Allah’s revealed messages to mankind through various prophets who preceded the prophetic mission of Muhammad (pbuh), or are philosophical and religious legacies generated by man in the complete absence of the former.

Mysticism is thus a universal, fluid and open-ended, so to speak, phenomenon whose conceptual and procedural parameters border on indefinite. By and large, it is associated with religions, ideologies and philosophies where the ultimate truth is yet to be fully established and put into practice. It follows that mysticism, in point of fact, is a desperate seeking of that full truth, where some desperate and unconventional means and ways are undertaken in the process, rather than being any reliable and true knowledge and experience of, and communion with, the ultimate divine Reality.

Mysticism is an infinite quest, an endless journey. By no means is it realizing a projected vision, or arriving at a coveted destination, or a station. Mysticism is a venture into the unknown, most of the time at the initiative of a mystic himself. It is a self-initiation within the soul towards some fairly distorted and ambiguous goals wrapped up in the cliché of enlightenment and Divinity-seeking. It is a one-way passage, the results of which a mystic can never predict and which can take him by surprise. It is a spiritual adventure which, admittedly, can give its adventurers some genuinely blissful, albeit transient, moments. Nonetheless, it also can turn seriously disappointing and hollow. More often than not, however, mysticism is a mode of constant wandering from one spiritual uncertainty and deficiency to another, from one dubious mystery to another. It is an endless and open-ended most sophisticated display of people’s spiritual qualms, anxieties and vagueness.