Gender and Sufism in Western Scholarship: Contemporary Constructions and Contestations

The Emergence of Scholarship in the West on Gender and Sufism: Smith, Schimmel, and Murata

English-language studies of Sufism emerged in the late 18th century, amidst the colonial encounter with “Oriental” traditions. Although there had been pre-colonial European encounters with Sufism, the colonial period ushered in an age of translation and interpretation that would later be described as Orientalism. Writers such as Sir William Jones (d. 1794), Sir John Malcolm (d. 1833), and John P. Brown (d. 1872) made substantial contributions to these efforts, and were instrumental in transmitting and translating Sufi history and literature to the West.

A defining tendency of Orientalist scholarship was to regard Sufism as a phenomenon that was either separate from Islam or marginal within it, with Islam itself being defined as essentially legalistic and orthodox – that is, thoroughly bound by rules and doctrine. Consequently, Western scholars during this period were strongly inclined to question the very nature and origins of Sufism. To the extent that Sufism did not meet their expectations concerning the essential character of Islam, scholars regarded it as an expression of spirituality that could not be innately Islamic, and that was to be understood as having an external relationship to the sources of Islamic orthodoxy.

It was not until the late 19th century and early 20th century that works of scholars such as Nicholson and Massignon created new possibilities for conceptualizing the relationship between Islam and Sufism. Recognizing limitations inherent in past Orientalist assumptions, these scholars pointed out that Sufism could not be comprehended without reference to Islamic sources or to the historical self-understandings of Sufi practitioners, who for centuries had understood their traditions to be expressions of an Islamic spirituality grounded in the Qur’an. ³

Like the understanding of Sufism as an integral dimension of Islamic spirituality and culture, appreciation of the role that women played and continue to play in Sufism has also taken time to emerge. While this is not altogether surprising given the privileged roles of men in both classical Islamic and Western scholarly traditions, it is nonetheless important to take note of a variety of absences in the early English-language literature on Sufism that various contemporary scholars are now trying to correct. Where the early literature characterized Islamic spirituality as a highly masculinized domain of religious life and thought, more recent scholars have offered less monochromatic representations by unearthing diverse examples of female Sufi personalities throughout Muslim history, by investigating gender relations in Sufi principles and everyday practice, and by exploring “feminine” aspects of Islam more generally.

As noted in the introduction to this paper, Smith’s work on Sufi female personalities, focusing particularly on Rabi‘a al-‘Adawiyya, opened new possibilities for exploring feminine experiences and principles within Sufism. Published in 1928, Smith’s Rabi‘a the Mystic and Her Fellow-Saints in Islam was the first attempt by an Orientalist scholar to demonstrate the powerful influence of women on the larger Sufi tradition, by compiling biographical works, translating from Arabic and Persian sources, ⁴ and presenting a variety of stories and known sayings. Although her original intention had been to focus more narrowly on Rabi‘a, Smith’s investigations demonstrated linkages between this pivotal early mystic and many other women mystics in the broader tradition, and enabled her to introduce English audiences to other prominent Sufi female figures from different historical periods of Muslim history (i.e., Mu‘adha al-‘Adawiyya, Sha‘wana, Nafisa, and Jahanara). Regarding all of these female figures as spiritual exemplars, Smith stated that “as far as rank among the ‘friends of God’ was concerned, there was complete equality between the sexes” (Smith, 1928: 19). Saintship, she affirmed, was not to be limited by sex insofar as it “was conferred on women as much as on men.” Contradicting earlier scholarly assumptions and focusing on how Sufi thought and practice emphasized union with the Divine, Smith argued that Sufism “left no room for distinction of sex” (Smith, 1928: 19) and that “in the spiritual life there could be ‘neither male nor female’” (Smith, 1928: 19).

From a historical perspective, Smith’s book opened new ways of understanding the Sufi tradition while also reflecting a broader social concern with gender equality. As a British woman writing a doctoral dissertation in 1920s England, Smith was necessarily a trailblazer in her own context, and was herself a witness to the triumph of the women’s suffrage movement in the United Kingdom and abroad. These lived experiences no doubt heightened her sensitivity to the underrepresentation of women as a more general cultural phenomenon. ⁵ Smith also would have been well aware of emergent liberal tendencies among educated Muslim thinkers in diverse regions, which included currents of religious reformism as well as women’s liberation. Smith’s interest in how “the development of mysticism (Sufism) within Islam…gave women their great opportunity to attain the rank of sainthood” (Smith, 1928: 19) no doubt reflects her own experiences as a woman inclined to “notice” themes pertaining to gender equality in the literature she was studying:

The women saints, a great host, out of whom it has been possible to mention only a few of the most outstanding in the foregoing pages, certainly represent the greatest height to which Muslim womanhood has attained, and in the reverence accorded them by Muslim men and the example which they offer to Muslim women, lies a real hope for the attainment of a higher standard, religious and social, for Muslim women today. (Smith, 1928: 232)

Thus, while writing about the past, Smith acknowledged an interest in the transformative implications of granting renewed attention to Muslim women saints and aspired to speak to her own historical moment.

Smith’s treatment of gender in Islam and Sufism was not, however, entirely free from prevailing Orientalist assumptions about orthodox Islam. Even while breaking new ground with respect to the importance of female Sufi saints, Smith also repeated certain limiting generalizations that were commonplace within the broader English-language literature. For Smith, as for most of her predecessors, “orthodox Islam” was to be found outside of Sufism. While she avoided sweeping statements about the religion as such and highlighted the potential for gender equality present within the early Islamic tradition, her characterization of the larger historical trajectory underscored women’s marginalization. ⁶ In her concluding thoughts, Smith framed Sufism as a potential remedy for orthodox Islam’s inherent limitations:

The modern Muslim woman, even more than man, is outgrowing orthodox Islam. The tendency is, on the one hand, towards religious indifference, on the other towards mysticism, which offers a living religion. It may be that the real grounds of hope for the future, for those who are of the House of Islam, lie in this latter tendency. (Smith, 1928: 232)

Smith’s scholarship on women and Sufism raises a number of important questions: What is the purpose of studying gender and Sufism, and how does scholarship on the subject reflect the identities and value commitments of those who have undertaken the research? Insofar as scholarship about historical figures and experiences necessarily reflects contemporary purposes, how can scholarly communities avoid becoming captive to their shared preconceptions and blind spots? To the extent that the present trajectory of scholarship on Islam includes recognition of greater diversity within Islamic experiences – including traditions associated with saintly Muslim women – what social factors have encouraged this expansion of perspectives? How should heightened realization of such diversity impact understandings of Islamic traditions more generally?

Clearly, the heightened presence of women in Western academies, together with the rise of feminism, have impacted research on women and Islam. By the end of the 20th century, English-language literature on this topic pointedly addressed patriarchal tendencies as well as bases for women’s advancement, even while generally marginalizing Sufism as a subject of analysis. ⁷ When surveying some notable texts found within literature on women and Islam, one finds only occasional representation of gender and Sufism. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and John L. Esposito, for example, state the following:

Sufism, or Islamic mysticism, was something of an exception, providing greater religious space for Muslim women…However, even within Sufism, due to the prevailing cultural attitudes toward women and women’s sexuality in particular, such examples remained a minority in a world in which women were often seen as seductresses and potential sources of moral and social disorder. (Yazbeck Haddad and Esposito, 1998: xiii)

In Leila Ahmed’s watershed book Women and Gender in Islam (1992), the subject of gender and Sufism was also given little attention even though Ahmed states that “Sufi ideas…implicitly challenged the way establishment Islam conceptualized gender” (66), and later briefly discusses the countercultural example of Rabi‘a al-‘Adawiyya. ⁸ “From early on,” Ahmed observes, “proponents [of Sufism] counted women among the important contributors to their tradition and among the elect spiritual leaders” (Ahmed, 1992: 96). Even in the majority of Fatema Mernissi’s books, the issue of gender and Sufism exists largely on the periphery of exploration and receives only cursory mention in one of her last books, Scheherazade Goes West: Different Cultures, Different Harems (2001), which mentions her familial connections to the Sufi tradition.

Such brief acknowledgements and rare references to gender and Sufism in the literature on women and Islam tend to characterize the topic as an exception that largely serves to validate more general rules. Twentieth-century scholars with an explicitly feminist orientation typically focused their research on the patriarchal nature of Muslim societies, without in-depth treatment of themes raised by Smith, and often neglected the roles of female Muslim saints and of Sufi women in all spheres of Muslim life.

One of the more thought-provoking and influential responses to some of these feminist critiques came from Annemarie Schimmel in 1995, around the time of her retirement from Harvard University. Originally published in German as Meine Seele ist eine Frau: Das Weibliche im Islam (My Soul Is a Woman: The Feminine in Islam), Schimmel’s contribution addressed what she saw as a need to mainstream or normalize the presence of women in Islamic literature and history. ⁹ My Soul Is a Woman was not written in a vacuum but rather was speaking to the context of that day. In her preface, Schimmel acknowledged that the subject of “the woman in Islam is now in vogue,” and observed that “the number of books dealing with women in Islam is growing by leaps and bounds” (Schimmel, 1997: 9). In particular, Schimmel mentioned the rise of feminist interest in “women in Islam,” and contended that such scholarship is “without sufficient knowledge of the historical facts and, even worse, to a great extent ignorant of Islamic languages and literatures” (Schimmel, 1997: 9). Consequently, Schimmel’s book became a response to flaws in some of the feminist critique of her time. “My intention with this book,” Schimmel stated, “is not to suddenly join the stream of feminist criticism but rather to explore a new approach, one that, I hope, will lead to a better understanding of the woman’s role in Islamic mysticism” (Schimmel, 1997: 9). With the goal of adding depth and nuance to the subject and underscoring ways in which mysticism was intertwined with daily Islamic life, Schimmel presents a richly textured account of the role of women in Islamic history, culture, and spirituality. Besides demonstrating that the role of women in Sufi history and communities has been far more varied than stereotypical preconceptions would allow, Schimmel also explores the significant topic of the feminine in Islam and its profound impact on Sufi personalities and communities.

Having already published over 50 books in diverse languages to become one of the most well-known scholars of Sufism, Schimmel had previously established foundations for the study of gender and Sufism in a variety of works throughout her career. ¹⁰ In her influential introductory textbook on Sufism, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, which was first published in 1975, Schimmel not only recognized Smith’s contribution but would devote an entire appendix to “the feminine element in Sufism” in which she described the “ambivalent” attitude of Sufism toward gender differences and the status of women. On the one hand, Schimmel, like Smith, observed the reverence for female Sufi saints, such as Rabi‘a and Fatima of Nishapur, and she also noted Sufis’ admiration for certain “positive aspects of womanhood” as seen in the lives of pious Biblical and Quranic figures such as Mary, mother of Jesus. On the other hand, Schimmel pointed out how certain male Sufi figures wrote about detesting women and offered generalizations about the weakness of womanhood (Schimmel, 1975: 427–428). ¹¹

Through her earlier works as well as through My Soul Is a Woman, Schimmel signaled the potential for extensive scholarly inquiry into the subject of gender and Sufism. In her introduction to My Soul Is a Woman, she wrote that “as soon as I started this project, I realized how very much has yet to be done” (Schimmel, 1997: 10). She then gave examples of areas of future scholarship that are needed such as understanding the role of women as Hadith scholars, literary figures, calligraphers, and politicians. Significantly, many of her recommendations have come to fruition. ¹² Though her stated intent was to promote a multidimensional understanding of women’s experiences within Islamic contexts rather than to promote activism, Schimmel’s approach has nonetheless influenced many Muslim feminists. ¹³ Scholars from different disciplines (women’s studies, political science, sociology, anthropology, etc.) have initiated research and social advocacy in ways that draw upon Schimmel’s understanding of the feminine within Islam, challenging patriarchal efforts to monopolize the (re)construction of Islamic cultures (for example, see Ahmed, 1992).

Another author whose work has influenced discussion of gender and the feminine within Islamic mystical traditions is Sachiko Murata of the State University of New York. Murata’s book The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thought (1992) was published shortly before Schimmel’s My Soul is a Woman, and Schimmel herself wrote a foreword for the book, invoking comparisons to Smith and Wiebke Walther. Underscoring the epistemological value of a woman’s experience, Schimmel suggests that female scholars can bring distinctive insights to the subject:

It seems fitting that a woman wrote this book on gender relations, just as the first true historical approach was given by a German woman, Wiebke Walther, and the first independent study of Rab’ia, the early woman saint in Islam (d. 801 in Iraq), was published (in 1928) by a British orientalist woman, Margaret Smith. (Schimmel, 1992: x)

As a fellow scholar of Islamic mysticism, Murata shared Schimmel’s understanding that the study of the esoteric or “Sufi” (sapiential) schools of thought within Islam reveals “feminine” aspects of religious experience, such as spiritual receptivity to the divine and inversion of conventional or exoteric gender categories.

Where exoteric jurisprudential schools provided Muslim societies with a structural conception of gender relationships, esoteric traditions underscored that the human soul necessarily adopts a feminine relationship with the masculine divine principle. Moreover, women who excelled in spiritual development were commonly regarded as honorary “men of God” toward whom ordinary men ought to show deference. Thus, esoteric spiritual traditions opened deeper meanings beyond outward gender differentiation and illuminated masculine and feminine principles within all human beings, as expressions of cosmic ithnayniyya (duality) and yet also as bases for approaching unity (tawhid) through complementarity.

Perhaps being influenced by Schimmel’s My Soul is a Woman, Murata would present a paper in 1999 at the Congreso Internacional sobre Mística Femenina “Mujeres de Luz” in Ávila, Spain, entitled, “Women of Light in Sufism.” ¹⁴ In this paper, Murata underscores what she understands as the most important spiritual truths of Islam, and relates recognition of the human being’s essentially feminine relationship to God as the basis for higher knowledge (ma‘arifa). For men and women alike, the process of recognizing God entails accepting oneself as a “woman of light” and surrendering to the transcendent:

As my final remark, let me go back to the saying of Rabi‘a with which I began. “Everything has a fruit,” she said, “and the fruit of recognition is coming forward to God.” Rabi‘a is simply saying that when people recognize themselves for what they truly are, they will have no choice but to come forward to God, because God is the source of their selves and all things. They will have no choice but to surrender to God willingly. By doing so, each of them, whether male or female, will become a woman of light. (Murata, 2001) ¹⁵

Murata’s emphasis on revalorizing a traditional understanding of the feminine principle strongly affirms her interpretation that all souls are feminine and all of creation in fact is female in relation to God, in a state of total receptivity.

Though understood in various ways, Schimmel’s and Murata’s writings have led to a new focus among various scholars on processes of “reverse genderization” within classical Sufi writings. ¹⁶ This concept refers to ways in which spiritual women can excel over men in “masculinity,” transcending their “woman-ness” while also sharing with men a necessarily feminine relationship to God.

Unearthing Texts and Contexts of Sufi Women’s Lives

In important respects, the works of Smith, Schimmel, and Murata helped to set the stage for further scholarship on gender and Sufism. Despite differences in approach and emphasis, their writings helped to indicate directions for additional research, while also providing themes to which a subsequent generation of scholars would respond – affirmatively as well as critically. By reaching into archives for missing texts and initiating fieldwork on the lived experiences of women in specific cultural and religious contexts, successors to these scholars have transformed gender and Sufism from a niche area to a field of study.

Significantly, both Smith and Schimmel provided future scholars with specific leads while describing the sources for their own books. Both authors noted missing texts on Sufi women which are referenced in classical literature, but which were subsequently “lost.” If found, they proposed, these missing sources could greatly benefit scholars in understanding more details about the lives of early ascetic Sufi female personalities. In particular, Smith and Schimmel mention Abd ar-Rahman al-Sulami’s (d. 1021) appendix for Tabaqat as-Sufiyya and Ibn al-Jawzi’s (d. 1200) Sifat as-Safwa.

In her 1999 translation, Rkia Elaroui Cornell describes how the long-lost Dhikr an-Niswa al-Muta’abbidat as-Sufiyyat of al-Sulami’s Tabaqat as-Sufiyya was found in 1991 by Mahmud Muhammad al-Tanahi at the library of Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In 1993, Al-Tanahi published an edited version of it, and due to a variety of issues in his version (i.e., transcription errors, lack of contextualization, and misunderstandings of Sufi tradition), Cornell would re-edit the Arabic text from the original manuscript and translate it into English for “a wider audience outside the Arab world” (Cornell, 1999: 46). In her introduction, Cornell also describes how this lost book fills a scholarly void by shedding light on the subject of gender and Sufism, not only in al-Sulami’s day but also for today. Cornell argues that there is a need to create a “hermeneutic of remembrance” in order to recognize these historical women as spiritual exemplars who, as al-Sulami claimed, were “masters of realities of divine oneness, recipients of divine discourses, possessors of true visions and exemplary conduct, and followers of the ways of the prophets” (Cornell, 1999: 48).

By offering 82 distinct portraits of early (mostly unknown) female Sufi personalities from a variety of regions (Syria, Iraq, and Iran), Cornell points out that al-Sulami was contradicting many of his fellow tabaqat writers whose biographical collections failed to include female spiritual exemplars or at best mentioned the token example of Rabi‘a. Cornell argues that such exclusion of Sufi women from historical references reflected a larger social bias that women were “deficient in religion and intellect” (Cornell, 1999: 63), a bias that continues to this day. Like Smith and Schimmel, Cornell highlights that these rare sacred biographies offer rich vignettes as composite portraits of distinct spiritualities in the formative period of Sufism. They also, as Cornell points out, provide a way to reconceptualize contemporary Sufi gender relations and even challenge patriarchal limitations in traditional Sufi orders and organizations.

The continued mistrust of women and their spirituality among many Sufis is a major reason why al-Sulami’s book of Sufi women is so important to the study of both Sufism and Islam today. It is the earliest extant work to give a sense of identity to the numerous Sufi women who served their male brethren, studied with them, supported them financially, and even, at times, surpassed them in their knowledge. Al-Sulami’s book of Sufi women challenges the legitimacy of modern restrictions on women’s participation in Sufism by demonstrating that in Sufism’s formative period, women were not so often excluded from the public aspects of spiritual life. Al-Sulami portrays Sufi women as full equals of their male counterparts in religion and intellect, as well as in their knowledge of Sufi doctrines and practices (Cornell, 1999: 19–20). To understand the impact of al-Sulami’s appendix, Cornell also included translations of al-Sulami’s portraits of early Sufi women found in Ibn al-Jawzi’s Sifat as-Safwa, which was another “lost” text unearthed. ¹⁷

At the beginning of the 21st century, Cornell’s translation and other scholarship would be part of a wave of scholarship discovering and analyzing the historical stories of different female Sufi personalities. ¹⁸ As will be discussed in the next section of this article, Maria Massi Dakake of George Mason University and Laury Silvers of the University of Toronto would each distinctly contribute their understandings of texts and contexts of early Sufi female narratives. Their differences point to a larger conversation in the Western academy about the impact of a scholar’s identity and training.

In addition to scholarship comparing a variety of Sufi women in one collection, there also emerged scholarship on detailed biographical accounts of particular historical Sufi female figures. One example being Arezou Azad (2013) of the University of Birmingham, who published a detailed exploration of pre-modern female mystics in the eastern Persian world with the case study of Umm ‘Ali, who lived one generation after Rabi‘a. Emil Homerin of the University of Rochester would offer a window into ‘A’ishah al-Ba’uniyah (d. 923/1517), one of the most well-known Sufi female mystics and scholars as well as prolific writers in the medieval era. For the first time, al-Ba’uniyah’s poetry and writing as well as her profound story would be available in English. ¹⁹ Also, building off the initial work of Carl W. Ernst (1999), Afshan Bokhari of Suffolk University in Boston would write extensively on the life and legacy of Jahanara Begum, who was not only a princess and daughter of the Mughal Empire’s Emperor Shah Jahan and Empress Mumtaz Mahal but was a poet and pious disciple of the Chishti Sufi order. ²⁰

Beverly Mack from the University of Kansas would publish a variety of works on Nana Asma’u (d. 1864), a princess, poet, and educator as well as daughter of Usman dan Fodio (d. 1817), founder of the Sokoto Caliphate and leader of the al-Qadiri Sufi order in Nigeria. Asma’u was known for her breadth of knowledge in Islamic traditions and Sufi philosophy. She in turn devoted most of her life to educating African Muslim women and even created an organization of women known as Yan Taru who would travel throughout West Africa, especially to rural areas, to critique the cultural resistance to female education in the region. Asma’u was also known for using poetry to inspire these women and others, invoking past Sufi female personalities as her inspiration.

The growing text-based scholarship of gender and Sufism would contribute to the development of gender and Sufism as a field of study. This field has grown to encompass a diverse body of scholars with different cultural identities and scholarly trainings with respect to methods and interpretive approaches. Each scholar has sought to fill gaps in sacred history by shedding light on the various roles of Sufi women, whether they be in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, or North America.

Due to such diversity, classical text-based scholarship has been complemented with more ethnographic methods. As briefly pointed out by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea in her foreword to Shemeem Burney Abbas’s The Female Voice in Sufi Ritual: Devotional Practices of Pakistan and India (2002), it is in scholarly work beyond text-based studies as reflected in the “on-the-ground research and fieldwork in Muslim countries” that you start to find more detailed accounts of women’s participation and engagement with Sufism (Fernea, 2002: xiv). ²¹ Most of these ethnographic scholars are women with connections to both the Western academy and the Muslim world and have knowledge of Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu, and/or other languages spoken by Muslims. ²² Considered in historical perspective, their contributions have broadened the field of Islamic and Sufi studies in dramatic ways. Background cultural identities and experiences of scholars have become far more diverse than in earlier generations, and their disciplinary trainings have also become more varied and eclectic.

Abbas, of the State University of New York, points out that Smith and Schimmel had not “investigated women’s rituals from an ethnographic or performance perspective” and it is this “sociolinguistic aspect of the female voice” that needs scholarly attention (Abbas, 2002: 1). Abbas’s fieldwork in Pakistan and India would help her to identify female participation in a variety of Sufi rituals (e.g., women as singers, musicians, patrons, guardians/preservers of the Sufi songs and lore, participants in Sufi shrine culture and activities, just to name a few).

To complement Abbas’s contributions to female leadership within Sufi rituals, Kelly Pemberton of George Washington University explores the complexity of authoritative female roles (i.e., women connected to Sufi male teachers – daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers) in which such women act as “de facto pirs” to disciples (see Pemberton, 2004, 2006, and 2010). Pemberton, like Abbas and other scholars such as Merin Shobhana Xavier (2018) of Queen’s University, stresses the need to reconceptualize gender relations and authoritative structures in South Asian contexts. In particular, these scholars are deciphering the distinct gender dynamics found in Sufi shrines in comparison with formal religious institutions (e.g., mosques) and showing that shrine culture provides a more inclusive space and platform for female activities. In addition to looking at “gendered spaces,” Xavier also examines the transnational networks in the Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship, comparing the role of women in the United States and Sri Lanka.

In her study of the Qadiriyya Budhishiyya Sufi order, Marta Domínguez Diaz (2015) also explores the role of women in local and global contexts. There are also scholars like Catherina Raudvere (2002) of Lund University and Samuli Schielke (2008) of Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin, exploring the significance of “the informal groups” for Sufi women in Turkey and Egypt respectively. Joseph Hill’s article, “‘All Women are Guides’: Sufi Leadership and Womanhood among Taalibe Bay in Senegal” (2010), and his book, Wrapping Authority: Women Islamic Leaders in a Sufi Movement in Dakar, Senegal (2018), also explore the “informal” authority of the muqaddama (feminine form for spiritual guide in the Tijani Sufi order). Other scholars, like William Rory Dickson (2015) and Tehseen Thaver (2018), have contributed to scholarship on contemporary female Sufi leaders and their influence in shaping Sufi traditions and communities. These works and others open discussion on the questions of authority and authenticity (i.e., the nature of successorship in terms of gender, the future of Sufi orders when it comes to gender relations, and the negotiation of tradition with contemporary contexts). ²³

Interpretive Differences: Traditionalist and Progressive Tendencies

In addition to the impact of internal developments such as the discovery of lost texts and contexts, events in international politics have also affected the study of gender and Sufism in Western academies. Rising concerns about terrorism, war, and intercultural conflict have led many university departments to hire faculty members with expertise on contemporary Islam, often seeking individuals with knowledge of reformist and/or mystical understandings of the faith tradition. Candidates who can credibly respond both to Islamophobia and to militant misappropriations of the religion have found increasing receptivity to their scholarship. Such scholars include members of an emergent “progressive Muslim” community which valorizes critical social engagement as well as proponents of Traditionalist Islam, understood as an integral religious and spiritual tradition that has been politically misappropriated in the modern era. ²⁴ As research on the subject of gender and Sufism has expanded, interpretive differences between progressive and Traditionalist scholars have become evident.

In 2003, a group of scholars contributed to an influential book that would help to launch the progressive Muslim movement. Edited by Omid Safi, Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism sought to engage contested issues of the present by drawing upon tradition through updated hermeneutical methodologies, and by practicing a “multiple critique” approach that subjected both Islamic and Western communities to scrutiny (as opposed to defensive alignment with one of these communities alone). Although many of the scholars who contributed to this volume have longstanding involvement with the study and practice of Sufism, they made little mention of these commitments within this collection. Safi’s opening comments do, however, briefly mention the significance of Sufi Islam in a time of great polarization: “As much as any group of Muslims, the Sufis have attempted to cultivate this interpersonal ethic at a communal level, and we would do well to cherish their adab yet again” (Safi, 2003: 14). Rather than focus on Sufism as a worldview, Safi invokes Sufi traditions as a source of civility, etiquette, moral clarity, and compassion in Islamic history.

Progressive Muslims contributor Sa‘diyya Shaikh built upon the efforts of earlier Muslim feminists, while signaling her understanding of Islamic feminism as “one of the most engaged contemporary responses to the core Quranic injunction for social justice of our time” (Shaikh, 2003: 159). ²⁵ It is important to note that Shaikh, like many other scholars of Islam and Sufism in the Western academy, has drawn inspiration from the scholarship and activism of Amina Wadud, one of the most prominent scholar-activists of gender justice. ²⁶ Wadud, like Asma Barlas, who produced “Believing Women” in Islam in 2003, has long been involved with a growing group of Muslim women scholars seeking to advance non-patriarchal interpretations of the Qur’an. ²⁷

Nine years after her contribution to Progressive Muslims – and now a senior lecturer rather than a doctoral student – Shaikh published a book that delved more deeply into debates about gender within Sufism: Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn ‘Arabi, Gender and Sexuality. Furthering her exploration of feminism by reading the works of the classical scholar Ibn al-’Arabi from a critical feminist perspective, Shaikh presents a reinterpretation of the manner in which this eminent Sufi thinker assigned meaning to gender in male–female relationships as well as in the broader field of cosmology. As Shaikh observes, gender is integral to Ibn ‘Arabi’s understanding of reality, and yet his use of gendered categories is not static or without paradox:

Ibn ‘Arabi uses gendered metaphors to describe all aspects of reality, including language about God, the macrocosmic configuration of the universe, and the microcosmic realm of human relationships…Ibn ‘Arabi appears to employ these gendered terms metaphorically in ways that reflect the normative gender symbolic while simultaneously transforming these conventional categories so that gender starts to become an open and malleable field of meaning. (Shaikh, 2012: 116–117)

What captures Shaikh’s attention is Ibn ‘Arabi’s dynamic use of gender concepts, and particularly his comfort with paradox and transforming or unstable meanings. In this, Ibn ‘Arabi follows other Sufi thinkers who engaged in formulations that have been referred to with the term, “reverse genderization,” albeit in distinctive ways and unexpected formulations:

Crucial to our understanding of Ibn ‘Arabi’s gender cartographies is the recognition that the principles of “maleness” and “femaleness” are not exclusively associated with biological males and females, respectively…Depending on one’s nature, state of spiritual refinement, and the particular context, therefore, a biological man may be “female,” or in a state of receptivity, while a biological woman might be “male,” or in a state of activity. (Shaikh, 2012: 121)

In Shaikh’s view, Traditionalist interpretations of Islam neglect the dynamism present in the thinking of Ibn ‘Arabi and other sources, and are content with a social order in which singular definitions of male and female gender characteristics prevail.

Shaikh extends this critique to patriarchal understandings of God, as well as to beliefs that the feminine principle applies to esoteric practice but not to the exoteric principles that structure social relations. In making her argument, she highlights statements by Murata that attribute finality to traditional understandings. Murata, for example, has said that “the ‘patriarchal’ view of God is normal for the Sharia that pertains to all Muslims but the ‘matriarchal’ view pertains to the spiritual path, the Tariqa, so not everyone can appreciate it” (Murata, 1992: 208). Similarly, Shaikh suggests that Murata’s efforts to revalorize the feminine principle within Islam are too limited, and offer little scope for the revalorization to impact society. In making this point, she highlights another statement from Murata’s The Tao of Islam:

Islamic spirituality…places divine mercy and compassion, the divine yin at the pinnacle of value. Again this primacy of yin cannot function on the social level since it undermines the authority of the law…In the Islamic perspective, the revealed law prevents society from degenerating into chaos. One gains liberty not by overthrowing hierarchy and constraints, but by finding liberty in its true abode, the spiritual realm. (Murata, 1992: 79)

In Shaikh’s judgment, this separation of the inner world of spirituality (feminine) from the authoritative, hierarchical system of social relations (masculine) is unnecessarily limiting, and inadequately expressive of nuances within esoteric texts such as Ibn ‘Arabi’s:

By incorporating the normative symbolic system and simultaneously expanding the horizons of its meaning, Ibn ‘Arabi opens up the dominant gender economy to rich interpretive possibilities, which are of tremendous value to the vision of Islamic feminism. (Shaikh, 2012: 120)

While it is arguable that Murata is well aware of complexities and transformations discussed by Shaikh, the central points of divergence between these two scholars of gender and Sufism can be found in their underlying worldviews, understandings of liberation, and interpretive priorities. Murata embraces a worldview within which limitations to human freedom and worldly satisfaction are unavoidable, and in which terms such as freedom and liberation can take on full meaning only in an inwardly transcendent or spiritual sense. Shaikh, in contrast, begins her interpretation with a decidedly more this-worldly standard of evaluation, according to which social reforms that improve upon human satisfaction are possible and not dependent solely on the fulfillment of traditional norms or on the realization of the ultimate ends of human existence. Each author interprets the gendering of traditional Islamic metaphysics in light of preunderstandings. Murata, for example, acknowledges her interpretive starting point quite openly:

If we were to ask Rabi‘a or any of the other Sufis about “women of light,” they would begin by talking about light from the viewpoint of knowledge, of religion. They would tell us not to be so concerned about the knowledge of the body that keeps us occupied with our own prejudices about society and psychology, and our own concepts like “justice” and “‘equality.” They would tell us that if we want to understand women, or if we want to understand men, we need to ask God to allow us to recognize ourselves and our Lord. (Murata, 1992, page number missing)

As this statement indicates, Murata prioritizes spiritual realization over social contestation and regards pursuits such as social activism as potentially contrary to transformation of the soul. In contrast, Shaikh argues that contesting patriarchal gender norms is possible without negating the spiritual content within traditional sources such as the writings of Ibn ‘Arabi.

Another interesting illustration of interpretive differences in the study of gender and Sufism is found in the scholarship of Dakake and Silvers. ²⁹ In her article “‘Guest of the Inmost Heart’: Conceptions of the Divine Beloved among Early Sufi Women,” Dakake identifies how Sufi female personalities from the formative and classical periods were influenced by a gendered social context that shaped a “common language of domesticity” found in their sayings and stories:

The concept of the Beloved as the intimate “guest,” and the juxtaposition of the outward body made available to other people and the heart in which she is always “alone with God,” creates a dual inner or “domestic” space – one for worldly guests, with whom she is intimate only on the level of her outward physical form, and one for the divine guest, exclusively, whom she hosts in her “inmost heart”. (Dakake, 2008: 81)

Silvers’s article “‘God Loves Me’: The Theological Content and Context of Early Pious and Sufi Women’s Sayings on Love” (2010) is a scholarly critique of Dakake’s observations (see also Silvers, 2015). In it, Silvers points out that Dakake significantly contributes to the scholarly discussions about the similar devotional attitudes and objectives of these Sufi women and men (e.g., how they shared a longing for intimacy, seeking retreat from worldly responsibilities, taking refuge in God as their sole provider and protector, etc.). Silvers also recognizes Dakake’s main argument “that despite these similarities, social boundaries produced a distinctly gendered inflection in the way women and men speak about their intimate relationship with God” (Silvers, 2010: 34). Silvers regards Dakake’s observation of a “language of domesticity” as significant to the study of Sufism and gender but argues that the distinction between Sufi men and women and how they articulate their relationships with the Divine needs to be refined. In particular, Silvers draws attention to “the specific historico-theological context” and how it is being presented or not in Dakake’s scholarship (Silvers, 2010: 35). As reflected by Silvers, “once we move away from this overarching observation to examine women in specific times and places the picture becomes considerably more complex” (Silvers, 2010: 35).

By applying critical scholarship to gendered texts, Silvers argues that Dakake’s observations problematically generalize the experiences and narratives of early pious women, and also neglect to acknowledge how the language of male guardianship and female obedience reinforces patriarchal gender norms. Silvers adds to her critique that Dakake “tends to read ‘domestic’ as a positive experience of God in apologetic terms, and thus does not include expressions of doubt or uncertain longing for God in her definition of distinctly feminine interiorising tradition” (Silvers, 2010: 59).

The approaches taken by Shaikh and Silvers on the one hand, and Murata and Dakake on the other, offer distinct and divergent understandings of themes pertaining to gender and Sufism. Whereas scholars with a Traditionalist orientation seek to revalorize the spiritual and socioreligious norms of premodern Islam and deflect modernist critiques, many scholars within the progressive Muslim community articulate respect for Sufism while nonetheless subjecting historical practices and writings to critical scrutiny, without deference to traditional authority structures. Marcia Hermansen has characterized works such as those by Shaikh and Silvers as the products of a “hermeneutics of suspicion” in which it is the responsibility of the scholar to “confront the hierarchal and patriarchal biases brought to bear in formulating earlier interpretations” (Hermansen, 2013: 19). While this terminology is not embraced by all scholars in the progressive community, it remains true that their research is informed by critical social theory and historicism as well as by an affinity for what they embrace as the most essential Islamic and Sufi precepts. Traditionalists, for their part, are themselves suspicious of modern beliefs associated with liberatory projects, be they theological or feminist, and are concerned above all with the exegesis of what they understand to be spiritual teachings with transhistorical validity.

Conclusion

Any field of study develops and changes over time and the study of gender and Sufism is no exception. Although this article does not attempt to provide a comprehensive survey of research on the topic, it does seek to delineate an overall trajectory of scholarship on gender and Sufism as presented by an increasingly diverse body of scholars. From Smith’s pioneering textual study of early Sufi women in 1928 to recent ethnographic explorations of women’s gendered experiences in diverse contexts of Islamic culture, the study of gender and Sufism in English-medium scholarship has passed through discernible stages and has unfolded in meaningful ways. A number of observations can be made.

First, themes pertaining to gender and Sufism are typically marginalized in the field of Islamic Studies as well as in influential scholarship on women and Islam. Despite evidence that Sufism was long integral to traditional Islamic cultures and knowledge systems, much Orientalist and Islamic Studies scholarship treats Islamic contemplative thought and practice as peripheral to mainstream Islam, and views them in largely exoteric terms pertaining to legalism and doctrinal orthodoxy. Amidst contemporary studies that focus on phenomena such as Islamic revivalism, modernist reformism, political Islam, and the impact of religious gender politics on women, scholarship on gender and Sufism has been a more peripheral area of study.

Secondly, the emergence of gender and Sufism as a distinct area of study in Western academies has been encouraged nonetheless by social movements seeking the advancement of women. Movements such as women’s suffrage and modern feminism – though not always explicitly embraced by scholars of gender and Sufism – have undoubtedly shaped the context within which curiosity about women’s religious and spiritual experiences has grown, and have encouraged scholars to apply new lenses. Even the presence of women in Western academies is linked to these broader social trends. Thus, scholars of gender and Sufism have been influenced by different waves of feminism (even if some may reject the feminist label or critique prominent feminist positions) and by the politics of women in the context of their day. In various Islamic settings, themes such as feminism have been mediated, at least in part, by writers who engage the topic of gender and Sufism. From Smith forward, even the search for and unearthing of lost texts on women in Sufism can be understood to reflect broader social and ideational trends which have invited curiosity about the contexts within which these texts were produced and subsequently consigned to the periphery.

Thirdly, diversification of methods as well as scholarly identities has further enriched the field of gender and Sufism. Methodologically, the growth of interdisciplinarity and the embrace of fieldwork as a valid approach have greatly facilitated new combinations of textual and ethnographic research methods. This has led to a rediscovery of women’s experiences within contemporary religious and cultural contexts, and has been further enhanced by the integration of scholars with social, religious, and linguistic ties to diverse Islamic cultures.

Finally, the expansion of scholarly interest and knowledge about gender and Sufism has not been free of contestation. In the early 21st century, gender and Sufism now exists as a distinct field of scholarship, albeit a field with different epistemic and interpretive communities. While not all scholars would wish to be seen as having objectives beyond the production of sound scholarship, a clear divide has emerged between those who acknowledge a goal of helping to liberate women within their religious tradition and those who aspire rather to liberate Islamic spiritual and social traditions from the hegemony of Western modernity. Scholars who adopt the former orientation place emphasis on critically analyzing both text and context, with attention to power dynamics, historicist critique, and the social construction of oppressive relationships. In contrast to this liberatory project, Traditionalists frame their own scholarship as a defence of an integral, ancient culture against cultural imperialism. In contrast to historicity, Traditionalists invoke what they regard as transhistorical and perennial values.

From its beginnings as a niche area of interest, gender and Sufism has emerged as a significant field of study with rich opportunities for further scholarship. Many questions remain for new generations of researchers: What historical texts and contexts still remain to be unearthed? What can be learned about contemporary contexts in which Sufi worldviews and practices play a role in shaping the experiences of Muslim women, and how might this impact understandings of Islamic cultures more generally? How will debates and conversations among epistemic communities unfold? Will there be dialogue and perhaps even meaningful scholarly collaboration across epistemic and normative divides? There is much to be gained from ongoing scholarly efforts, and it appears likely that the findings of scholars working in this area will have a significant impact on understandings of Islam itself, both in traditional and contemporary expressions.