Bridging Sufism and Islamism

Abstract

Sufism, perceived as the mystical strain of Islam, and political Islam, labelled as Islamism, has often been presented as quite simply antagonistic both by Muslim actors as well as by scholarly discourse. Recent studies have however, emphasized the fact that the frontiers between the two are far more ambivalent and porous than is generally thought.1 A Pakistani based Islamic politico-religious organization has tried to reorganize these categories of Islam in a religious reformulation granting centrality to Sufism, thus challenging the stereotypical representations of reformism in its society.