Neo-Sufism: Reconsidered Again

Abstract

Neo-Sufism is a term used by scholars, including Nehemia Levtzion, to describe a set of movements of Islamic renewal in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. By the early 1990s, the term came to be viewed by some critics as representing a conceptual consensus that was erroneous in its understanding of Sufi movements. At the beginning of the twenty first century, a reconsideration of this critique leads to the conclusion, in this article’s analysis, that the critique raises important issues but needs to be modified in view of recent scholarship. The Sufi organizations of the period are seen as being “new.” In terms of content, certain aspects of the “neo-Sufism” conceptualizations are confirmed, but in ways that require modification of both the relatively simplistic early descriptions in the so called consensus and the stark lines of the critique. Nehemia Levtzion’s research is important in this revisionism.

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