Modern Sufis and the State

In recent years, Sufism has been held up as a supposedly peaceful alternative to forms of Islam associated with violence, an embodiment of tolerance and pluralism. Modern Sufism and the State brings together a range of scholars, including anthropologists, historians, and religious-studies specialists, to challenge common assumptions.

Katherine Pratt Ewing is professor of religion at Columbia University and professor emerita of cultural anthropology at Duke University. Her books include Arguing Sainthood: Modernity, Psychoanalysis, and Islam (1997) and Stolen Honor: Stigmatizing Muslim Men in Berlin (2008).

Rosemary R. Corbett is the author of Making Moderate Islam: Sufism, Service, and the “Ground Zero Mosque” Controversy (2017). She is a faculty fellow for the Bard Prison Initiative and holds a PhD in religion from Columbia University.

Barbara Metcalf, author of Islamic Contestations: Essays on Muslims in India and Pakistan:
This welcome book explores the roles of those widely influential figures identified as Sufis. This is an important subject given the ignorance about Sufis and much else that often fuels the anti-Muslim violence and Islamophobia all too evident in today's world. The work should be of interest to policy makers involved with Muslim populations as well as to academics and others interested in Islam in the contemporary world.

Scott Kugle, author of Sufis and Saints’ Bodies: Mysticism, Corporeality, and Sacred Power in Islam:
Modern Sufis and the State shows the diversity, multivalence, and local embeddedness of Sufi political engagements. Its emphasis on complexity and local rootedness is a welcome contribution. The editors and the contributors bridge several different fields and combine expertise to offer new and important perspectives on the Barelwi and Deobandi movements.

Charles Hirschkind, author of The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics:
A crucial resource for understanding the limits and legacies of 'Sufism'—a category invented by nineteenth-century Orientalism—in shaping patterns of religious and political conflict, affinity, and indifference across South Asian societies. This superb collection offers a powerful rebuttal to the reigning orthodoxy of Sufi contra Salafi within studies of contemporary Islam.

Nile Green, author of Sufism: A Global History:
Discussions of Islam and politics typically focus on Islamic states and Islamists, leaving Sufis to appear transcendently above the political realm. These twelve compelling case studies show how Sufi leaders and organizations are entangled in local, national, and transnational politics among the world's largest Muslim communities in India and Pakistan.