Aḥmad Sirhindī: A 21st-century update
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Arthur F. Buehler
Abstract
This article revises current understandings of the Indian Naqshbandī Shaykh, Aḥmad Sirhindī (d. 1624). It moves analytically beyond the pioneering and balanced scholarly accounts of Yohanan Friedmann and J.G.J. ter Haar, directly addressing the issues that Sirhindī's modern scholarly detractors have considered his most alarming statements and alleged exaggerated claims. Looking sociologically at Sirhindī's ashrāfī social context and his role as a sufi teacher the article demonstrates the logic of many of his shocking statements, some of which involve personal issues that have yet to be discussed in western scholarly literature. Finally, the so-called “controversy” generated between two perspectives of unity (waḥdat-i wujūd and waḥdat-i shuhūd) has been vastly overstated in the scholarly literature. The overall sufi consensus is that there is no real controversy. Indeed, both Ibn al-Ἁrabī and Sirhindī agree that these two valid modes of unity are simply two ways of perceiving the One.
© Walter de Gruyter 2011
Articles in the same Issue
- Muhammad, The Jews and the Constitution of Medina: Retrieving the historical Kernel
- Hisham Djait über die „Geschichtlichkeit der Verkündigung Muḥammads“
- Ἁbd al-Raḥmān ibn Rustum al-Fārisī. Une tentative de biographie du premier imam de Tāhart
- Shifting Legal Authority from the Ruler to the ῾Ulamā᾿: Rationalizing the Punishment for Drinking Wine During the Saljūq Period
- Ibn Taymiyya's Criticism of the Syllogism
- Aḥmad Sirhindī: A 21st-century update
- Modernity from Within: Islamic Fundamentalism and Sufism
- Buchbesprechungen
Articles in the same Issue
- Muhammad, The Jews and the Constitution of Medina: Retrieving the historical Kernel
- Hisham Djait über die „Geschichtlichkeit der Verkündigung Muḥammads“
- Ἁbd al-Raḥmān ibn Rustum al-Fārisī. Une tentative de biographie du premier imam de Tāhart
- Shifting Legal Authority from the Ruler to the ῾Ulamā᾿: Rationalizing the Punishment for Drinking Wine During the Saljūq Period
- Ibn Taymiyya's Criticism of the Syllogism
- Aḥmad Sirhindī: A 21st-century update
- Modernity from Within: Islamic Fundamentalism and Sufism
- Buchbesprechungen
