Frontline Mysticism and Eastern Spirituality

Abstract

Love mysticism, long viewed as the finest expression of religious experience in Islam, has been displaced in the past two decades with 'frontline/hate mysticism'. This militarized spirituality was nurtured in the 1980s by Iranian theologues, who during the war with Iraq promised prospective teenage martyrs 'ascendance' to heaven. Soon adopted by Islamist activists in other parts of the world, this vengeful modality of piety was an extension of a politicized spirituality that emerged in the aftermath of World War I by redefining the East as spiritual.