Islamic Mysticism and the West

Catalog description

Sufism, the mystical tradition in Islam, has exerted considerable influence on modern European and American thought. Much like the adoption of yoga and other Eastern spiritual practices in the modern West, Sufism has been shorn of much of its medieval and Islamic origins in its transmutation into broader Western neo-spiritual and theosophic frameworks for understanding the human’s relationship to God, the world, the self and the body. In this course, we will explore Islamic mysticism through its adoption in modern Western literature. What about Sufism attracted Western spiritual seekers? How did they understand Sufi thought and ideas? How did they come to learn about Sufi practices and literature? In this course we will read deeply from the work of three significant Sufi-inspired authors. Beginning with the work of the extremely controversial Sufi psychologist Idries Shah, we will explore how Sufi stories were brought to bear on the field of psychotherapy and in European spiritualist circles. After this, we will explore the influence of Sufism on André Gide’s phantasmic celebrations of earthly sensuality, before turning to Doris Lessing’s speculative Sufi space fiction.