Sufism, Moral Performance and the Public Sphere in Syria

Abstract

This article aims to analyze Sufism as a religious framework for social action in contemporary Syria. Sufism in Syria has been on the rise during the last two decades, in response to a growing demand for Islamic forms of personal piety. The focus of the Sufi tradition on the moral reform of the individual and on the reconfiguration of the self according to religious principles generates religiously informed social agents. The expression of Sufi identities in the public sphere is done through various forms of moral performance, i.e. the enactment of embodied religious principles as the framework for social practices. This continuous mobilization by the Sufis of embodied religious principles has the effect of inscribing them in the processes that shape and constitute the Syrian public sphere. The ethnographic data analyzed here was collected during my fieldwork among Sufi communities in Aleppo and the Kurd Dagh between 1999 and 2001 and again in May 2002.

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