Sufism and Islam

About The Book

Many Muslims look into their hearts today and find a spiritual emptiness. Speeches abound, but when the chairs are folded up and people go home, they find their prayers and inner life as dry as ever. Something is clearly missing. This essay shows that at the centre of the Islamic revelation, there is a brilliant light that has never been put out, but in our time has been covered over by the bushel-basket of modernist and Muslim-reform literature.

It proves from the Qur'an and sunna that from the very beginning of Islam, there has been a fully orthodox and operational science for increasing the impetus and intensity of one's relationship with the Divine, a traditional spirituality that is today called 'Sufism', in all previous Islamic eras was simple known and practised as 'the way to Allah'. It discusses critics of Sufism, ancient and modern, and shows that if the false coin has sometimes circulated among Muslims, the real thing is the brightest hope Islam has to offer a world benighted by nihilism and materialism.

About The Author

Shaykh Nuh Ha Mim Keller is an American convert to Islam. He is a translator of Islamic books and a specialist in Islamic law, as well as being authorized by Abd al-Rahman al-Shaghouri as a sheikh in Sufism in the Shadhili Order.

He studied philosophy and Arabic at the University of Chicago, located in Chicago, Illinois, and the University of California, Los Angeles, located in Los Angeles, California. Keller converted to Islam from Christianity in 1977. Currently, Keller lives in Amman, Jordan. Keller is a Sufi.

His English translation of Umdat al-Salik, Reliance of the Traveller, (Sunna Books, 1991) is a Shafi'i manual of Shariah. It is the first Islamic legal work in a European language to receive the certification of Al-Azhar University. This translation has led to this work becoming influential among Western Muslims.