Sufism in Europe

Francesco Piraino is Research Associate at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School and the director of the Centre for Comparative Studies of Civilizations and Spiritualities at the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice. Piraino is a sociologist of religion, culture, and art. He obtained his PhD in Sociology in 2016 at the Scuola Normale Superiore (Florence) and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris) and was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow at KU Leuven. Piraino works on spirituality, esotericism, mysticism, and the relationship between art and religion. He has recently published Le soufisme en Europe: islam, ésotérisme et new age (Karthala, 2023) and edited Religious Dimensions of Conspiracy Theories Comparing and Connecting Old and New Trends (with Marco Pasi and Egil Asprem, Routledge 2022).

Through closely observed case studies of four contemporary Sufi orders in Italy and France, Francesco Piraino reveals remarkable cross-fertilisations of ritual, doctrine and organisation. The resulting picture shows a lively Euro-Sufism shaped by the selective absorption of New Age and Western esoteric teachings no less than debates with secular humanists and Islamists.

• Foreword by Mark SedgwickIntroductionSufism as Mysticism – Scientia Experimentalis and as Discursive Tradition – Sacra DoctrinaSufi Pioneers in EuropeQādiriyya BūdshīshiyyaShādiliyya Darqāwiyya ʿAlāwiyyaThe Naqshbandiyya-ḤaqqāniyyaAḥmadiyya-Idrīsiyya ShādhiliyyaConclusionsEpilogueBibliographical referencesGlossary