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Islamic Mysticism: Tasawwuf

© Nasim Fatima

Sufism is a mystical Islamic belief and practice in which Muslims seek to find the truth of Divine Love and Knowledge through direct personal experience of God. It consists of a variety of mystical paths that are designed to ascertain the nature of man and God and to facilitate the experience of the presence of divine love and wisdom in the world.

The origin of the word Sufism has been traced from the word "suf", which means wool, the first Sufis having worn only garments of pure wool. What has never been pointed out is that many Jewish and Christian ascetics of these early times covered themselves, in imitation of St. John the Baptist in the desert, only with sheepskins. It may be that this example was followed by some of the early Sufis. Nonetheless to wear wool can only be an external and popular meaning of the term tasawwuf, which is equivalent in its numerical symbolism, to al - Hikmat al ilahiyyah "Divine Wisdom." Al-Biruni suggested a derivation of Sufi, plural of 'Sufiya', from the Greek 'Sophia', wisdom, but this is etymogically untenable because the Greek letter sigma normally becomes s n (s) in Arabic and not sad (s), it may be, however, that there is an intentional, symbolic assonance.

As Reynold A. Nicholson goes further to explain its origin in his book "The Mystics of Islam"

"...Sufi has a specific religious connotation and is restricted by the usage to those who profess the Mohammedan faith. And the Arabic word, although in course of time it appropriated the high significance of Greeks - lips sealed by Holy mysteries, eyes closed in visionary rapture - bore a humbler meaning when it first gained currency (about 800 A.D.). Until recently its derivation was in dispute. Most Sufis flying in the name of etymology have derived it from am Arabic root that conveys the notion of purity; this would make Sufi mean 'one who is pure at heart' or 'one of the elect'. Some European scholars identified it in the sense of theosophist. But Noldeke, in an article written twenty years ago, showed conclusively that the name was derived from "suf" (wool), and was originally applied to those Muslim ascetics who, in imitation of Christian hermits, clad themselves in coarse woolen garments as a sign of penitence and renunciation of worldly vanities."

Sufism, tasawwuf, which is the esoteric or inward (batin) aspect of Islam, is to distinguished from exoteric or "external" (zahir) Islam just as direct contemplation of spiritual or divine realities is distinguishable from the fulfilling of the laws which translate them in the individual order in connection with the conditions of a particular phase of humanity.