Mustapha Sheikh – författare

This book is about the emergence of a new activist Sufism in the Muslim world from the sixteenth century onwards, which emphasized personal responsibility for putting Godâs guidance into practice. It focuses specifically on developments at the centre of the Ottoman Empire, but also considers both how they might have been influenced by the wider connections and engagements of learned and holy men and how their influence might have been spread from the Ottoman Empire to South Asia in particular. The immediate focus is on the Qadizadeli movement which flourished in Istanbul from the 1620s to the 1680s and which inveighed against corrupt scholars and heterodox Sufis. The book aims by studying the relationship between Ahmad al-Rumi al-Aqhisariâs magisterial Majalis al-abrar and Qadizadeli beliefs to place both author and the movement in an Ottoman, Hanafi, and Sufi milieu. In so doing, it breaks new ground, both in bringing to light al-Aqhisariâs writings, and methodologically, in Ottoman studies at least, in employing line-by-line textual comparisons to ascertain the borrowings and influences linking al-Aqhisari to medieval Islamic thinkers such as Ahmad b. Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, as well as to several near-contemporaries. Most significantly, the book finally puts to rest the strict dichotomy between Qadizadeli reformism and Sufism, a dichotomy that with too few exceptions continues to be the mainstay of the existing literature.

This volume contributes to the growing literature on global (in)justice and (in)equality, seeking in its own unique way to highlight that we are on a dangerous path when we ignore the plight of those who are the weakest, most oppressed and disenfranchised; and that we risk even more when we are complicit in the intransigent and profound injustices they experience. As Blunt (2020) powerfully argued, while for those who this volume is dedicated will possibly not be its readers, it is those readers in positions of power and affluence who need to be reminded and held responsible for their actions and the subsequent consequences.

This collection of wisdoms from the works of Ibn Taymiyyah reflects the range of his penetrative insight and wisdom. It aims to to recast his work for a new generation of Muslims who are seeking a path through the challenges of the modern age. With an emphasis upon literary concision each aphorism pregnant with meaning, carefully explained in a commentary.