Quotes About Sufism

Finally I asked my friend Judy, who spent many years as a student of Sufism and who embodies fana —the self-annihilating love of God—as well as anyone I know. When I asked her to define spirituality for me, she thought for a moment and said, 'Spirituality is the active pursuit of the God you didn't make up.' I loved that. I also did not know what it meant.

I love Sufism as I love beautiful poetry, but it is not the answer. Sufism is like a mirage in the desert. It says to you, come and sit, relax and enjoy yourself for a while.

Le soufisme attire, séduit, tandis que l'islam fait figure de repoussoir. Quel paradoxe ! Le soufisme, plénitude de l'islam, voie d'excellence évoquée par le Prophète.

Enfin, le soufisme n'était pas une maladie, ce qui m'a déjà rassuré un peu, c'était une façon de penser -même s'il y a des façons de penser qui sont aussi des maladies, disait souvent monsieur Ibrahim.

Let me also again emphasize that it is only within Islam that Sufism can be practiced. The two have never been separated from each other in their reality and in fact are inwardly one, and certainly they have never been separated for me throughout my life.

From it genesis twelve hundred years ago to today, Islamic philosophy (al-hikmah; al-falsafah) has been one of the major intellectual traditions within the Islamic world, and it has influenced and been influenced by many other intellectual perspectives, including Scholastic theology (kalam) and doctrinal Sufism (al-ma'rifah or al-tasawwuf al-'ilmi) and theoretical gnosis ('irfan-i nazari).

Inside this robe there is only God.

while at the same time insisting that the pursuit of illumination remain within the limits of the shariah. Conservative and dismissive of scientific rationality, it was Al-Ghazali more than anyone else who made Sufism respectable.

There is no Sufism without Islam. Yet there are some who would like to suffocate the breath of Allah and the Prophet Mohammed from the work of Mevlana Jalaludddin Rumi.

My mother's belief in spiritual healers grew stronger after our family went through a rough patch following my father's death. Sufi saint Karimullah Shah Kadri changed our lives, and all of us converted to Sufism. But it wasn't an instantaneous decision - it took us 10 years to convert. The change in religion was like washing away the past.

The practice of Sufism is the intention to move toward truth by means of love and devotion.

Comme disait El-Hallâj : «Que nul ne boive le vin s'il n'est pas un héros ; s'il n'a abandonné le sommeil, et que ses paupières ne se ferment plus. » L'énigme du Soufisme, c'est qu'on désigne la chose par le prix qu'elle vaut ; que la valeur céleste s'exprime en termes de sacrifices terrestres.

The parallels to modern physics [with mysticism] appear not only in the Vedas of Hinduism, in the I Ching, or in the Buddhist sutras, but also in the fragments of Heraclitus, in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, or in the teachings of the Yaqui sorcerer Don Juan.

I read, read enormously on all different fields of Islamic thought, from philosophy to Islamic literature, poetry, exegeses, knowledge of the Hadith, the teachings of the prophet. That's how I trained myself. And then I was appointed imam by a Sufi master from Istanbul, Turkey.

Islam and Sufism are one. Teaching that to understand Islam one must be a lover, how can one understand Islam when the heart is empty of love.

The realization of 'La ilaha illa Allah' is one of the states of the heart that can be neither expressed by the tongue nor thought out by the mind.

Sufism, " according to the Sufi, "is an adventure in living, necessary adventure.

Sufism is the doing in this lifetime what any fool will be doing in then thousand years' time.

Sufism is transmitted by means of the human exemplar, the teacher.

The totality of life cannot be understood, so runs Sufi teaching, if it is studied only through the methods which we use in everyday living.

Before garden, vine or grape was in the world, " writes one, "our soul was drunken with immortal wine.

Have the nature of a dervish: then wear a stylish cap.

Sufism is therefore not 'Do as I say and not as I do', or even 'Do as I do', but 'Experience and you will know'.

For more than 300 years Qawwali music and Sufism have been deeply anchored in my family's roots and we spread it around to the public.