Religion; Islam Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Religion; Islam - Essay Example The above paragraph may show a perspective that the Sufi would not agree to. Because, if the Sufi spiritual quest has to be considered rightful it should have been given in the Quran and/or the sunnah of Prophet Mohammad. Andrew Rippin, in his work Muslims: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices, states that To defend Sufism several Muslims say that it was only a respond to the increasing materialism in the Islamic world. However, this argument does not answer the question. In fact it evades it. As even in early Islamic times and under the Prophet Mohammad’s leadership there was materialism and people enjoyed it. The legal nature of the Islamic system has never addressed the issue of materialism and so it was called insufficient by the people who became Sufis during their search for spirituality. This, Islam was called a religion of unspiritual nature. â€Å"considerable ink has been spent by modern scholarship on the ‘origins’ of Sufism in Islam, as to how far it is ‘genuinely’ Islamic and how far a product, in the face of Islam, of outside influences, particularly Christian and Gnostic.†2 Seyyed Hossein Nasr is a Muslim scholar, who in his work Sufi Essays, has shown his contempt of Islamic scholars of the West who are following the older system of detailing Sufism as some type of strange effect within Islam, and celebrates with the reality that â€Å"many are now willing to accept the Islamic origin of Sufism and the unbreakable link connecting Sufism to Islam.†3 While these are responses to the questions originally posed, they appear to be more worried with the preservation of the external manifestation of Islamic unity, than with significant academic research and assessment. Plenty of traditions about the life of Prophet Mohammad that the Sufis relate are not to be seen in the major hadith collections (Bukhari, Muslim, Kulayni, Ibn Babuya), and thus they are rejected. Nevertheless, within Sufi spheres the customs are preserved - and considered by