Inner and Outer Ways: Sufism and Subjectivity in Egypt and beyond

Abstract

This article describes how an Egyptian Sufi leader makes sense of his experiences of displacement in migration through Sufi vocabularies and disciplines, thus exploring the ways in which religious beliefs and ritual practices coalesce with the existential quest. In the first part of the text, I concentrate on how, through notions such as bâṭin and ẓâhir, as well as through his experience of the haḍra ritual, he responds to the subjective needs and material contingencies he is confronted with during his travels. In the second part of the paper, I trace the genealogy of my interlocutor's understandings of Sufi praxis, highlighting his capacity of blending together different cosmologies and traditions in the wake of our dialogue. Combining questions of narration and individual biography with questions of religious subjectivity and subjectivation, the text engages with some of the most central concerns of recent ethnographic and theoretical inquiries into Islamic religious practice.

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