Contemplating Sufism

Dialogue and Tradition across Southeast Asia

Contemplating Sufism: Dialogue and Tradition across Southeast Asia

"Exploring Sufi sites and seminaries, Professor Aljunied vividly describes how a dialogic tradition facilitated the formation of a Sufi habitus and life form across Muslim-majority Southeast Asia. The work deftly articulates the synergies between Sufis and the wider public, showing how such dynamics infused increasingly powerful mediums and popular forms of mass mobilization during the colonial and post-colonial eras."
—ARMANDO SALVATORE, Barbara and Patrick Keenan Chair in Interfaith Studies, McGill University, Canada

"At once personal and scholarly, this book shows how Sufis were engaged in dual dialogues—with themselves and their surroundings—that made them agents of social change in Southeast Asia's past and present alike. Paying equal attention to devotion and miracles, and no less, the political and martial aspects of Sufi activism, Aljunied explains why Islam remains so important in the region today."
—NILE GREEN, Ibn Khaldun Endowed Chair in World History, University of California, Los Angeles

"Splendidly written and accessible, Khairudin Aljunied tells a lively and engaging story of Muslim piety, metaphysics, and politics as an integral part of Islamic thought and practice in Southeast Asia. Readers will gain a profound and nuanced understanding of Islam in a region with the world’s largest Muslim population. A compelling read!"
—EBRAHIM MOOSA, Mirza Family Professor of Islamic Thought and Muslim Societies, University of Notre Dame, USA

Contemplating Sufism employs a unique "contemplative histories" methodology to uncover how and why Sufis employed creative mediums to embed and sustain their importance in the region for many centuries. Recognizing Sufism as a dialogical tradition, Khairudin Aljunied reveals the emotional, institutional, and political forces that continue to influence Sufi thought and practices.

Providing an accessible and coherent synthesis of the latest scholarship in the field, this innovative study integrates data from around the world, vignettes and anecdotes of Southeast Asian Sufism, and the author's ethnographic observations and personal experiences. Lively and engaging chapters contain vivid descriptions and rich analyses of the texts, ideas, people, practices, and institutions that aided in the development of Sufism—and transformed Southeast Asia’s ideological, cultural, political, and social landscapes.

Illustrating the inventiveness and energy of the Sufis, Contemplating Sufism: Dialogue and Tradition across Southeast Asia is an excellent textbook for undergraduate and graduate courses on Sufism and a valuable resource for academics, scholars, and general readers with an interest in the mystical dimension of Islam in the non-Arab world.

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