Ibnul Qayyim and Sufism
“Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya had tried to incorporate elements of the Sufi lexicon in a broader Islamic spiritual enterprise, that envisaged to instill the values of the sharia in the hearts and minds of the believers, not only as an obligation that is imposed from a transcendent authority, but as elements of a piety that are heartfelt and experienced on a sentimental level as well. In this process he painstakingly shifted through the mass of terms that were employed in al-Anṣārī’s Manāzil al-sāʾirīn and tried to give the words a new sense that stripped the terms of its particular Sufi meaning and reintegrated them in an Islamic lexicon of spirituality that makes sense for all the believers. Throughout the Madārij al-sālikīn we see that he employs an overall strategy. In his discussion of the Sufi terminology, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya has done three things. He dismantled the Sufi terms and brought them back to conventional language, where they could serve in the elaboration of an alternative spirituality; he promoted a sense of awareness for the Koranic context of the terms and disqualified the elitist structure of the Sufi path of spiritual self-perfection. First of all, he gave most importance to these words that are found in a Koranic context and he scanned carefully how these words were used in the Sufi lexicon. When he thought that the original meaning of these terms was distorted he did not fail to criticise the Sufi authors. In a second phase, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya dissected the conventional Sufi theories of spiritual progress that were represented by the metaphor of the mystic travel along stations and spiritual states towards God. He learned his disciples that the path to God is common to all believers without distinction. To all likelihood Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya saw it as his task to offer an alternative spirituality to Sufism, that is a generalised Sunni spirituality aimed at the internalising of religious precepts and obligations. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya defended a practical doctrine that offers the believers a set of alternative possible works in religious and social life that are all meritorious and necessary in their own right and on their due time; prayer, dhikr, pilgrimage, contemplation, etc. It is possibly this practical sense of integrating the religious sentiment in prescribed Sunni devotional practice that makes that Ibn al-Qayyim’s works are still so popular today.” (bold emphasis mine)
- Gino Schallenbergh, “Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s Manipulation of Sufi Terms,” In: Islamic Theology, Philosophy and Law: Debating Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, ed. Krawietz, B. & Tamer, G., p. 120
Related Reading:
Ibn Taymiyyah and Sufism