Islamic Mysticism: A Secular Perspective

Despite how it may appear to outsides, Islam is not wholly a religion of rigid rules and unforgiving severity, unlikely talkes and unthingking belief; it has a heart made of poetry and art, vision and devotion, which can be fully known only from within. It is the side of the religion that has attracted many Western intellectuals and that believers often present in their writings of Islam's only or truest face.

Sufism raises many of the deepest questions that can be asked about metaphysics and religious experience, questions that have recieved considerable attention in recent debates about the philosophy of religion. Having been drawn to the mystial aspect aspects of Islam through the writings of traditional authors, I made contact in the mideighties with a group of Western converts centered around a Sufi sheikh from Cyprus.

I was initiated in 1985 and for three years thereafter I led the Muslim life as far as possible in full, including fasts, prayers, and prohibitions. As time went on, however, it became plain to me that I was leading a double life. Some of my personal reservations about Islam, Sufism, and religion in general were not shared by other memebers of the group, liberal as they were in comparison with Muslims in general.

This situation led to my gradual disillusionment, distancing, and "dropping out" of activities. About this time the Rushdie affair broke, and I was forced to decide whose side I was on. Needless to say, it was not the side of the Muslims. Regardless of the eventual outcome, my experience of close contact with the mystical side of Islam was of incomperable worth to me in affording insights into the mentality of Muslims in general, yet it left me with feelings of nostalgia and regret, as for an innocent childhood inevitably outgrown.