ABSTRACT
The title, “Global Sufism: ‘Theirs and Ours’ ” highlights transformations of Sufi organizations and styles occurring both in the West and in the Muslim world and how these complicate the “global” and “local” as constructs. For example, the construct “ours” could indicate how Westerners have reinterpreted and institutionalized Sufism, and perhaps re-exported some elements back to Muslim societies. “Theirs”, on the other hand, would consider how Sufi movements originally based in Muslim societies have modified elements of the classical Sufi Orders (tariqas) in the face of modernization and globalization and subsequently attempted to export these new forms of Sufism to the West. Some specific effects of globalization are mobility, rapid dissemination of information through print, video and the Internet, and encounters of Eastern (Muslim) and Western (European and American) individuals and cultural elements in ways that, while they do not entirely eliminate power discrepancies, have the potential for more equal contributions in shaping interactions and ultimately constituting networks. In fact “theirs” and “ours” ultimately converge in an age of globalization. At the same time, we may inquire whether the differences that exist among today’s global Sufi movements arise due to the persistence of cultural concepts and practices of networking developed in pre-modernity. One theoretical problem is the tendency to conflate the Western and the modern. The inevitable adoption of technologies such as print or the Internet by groups certainly occasions shifts in strategies, discourse and outreach – but are these shifts to the West, to the modern or to the global?
