The two Muslim poets featured in Scott Kugle’s comparative study lived separate lives during the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries in the Deccan region of southern India. Here, they meet in the realm of literary imagination, illuminating the complexity of gender, sexuality, and religious practice in South Asian Islamic culture. Shah Siraj Awrangabadi (1715-1763), known as “Sun,” was a Sunni who, after a youthful homosexual love affair, gave up sexual relationships to follow a path ...

Sufi Meditation and Contemplationoffers fresh translations of three classic Sufi texts from Mughal India: The Alms Bowl of Shaykh Kalimullah Shajehanabadi,The Compass of Truth by Dara Shikoh, and Treatise on the Human Body attributed to Mu'in al-Din Chishti.These texts elucidate meditation practices and the resulting effects. All three come from the Mughal era in India, which witnessed a flowering of Sufism in innovative personalities, diverse mystical orders and bold literary expressions....

Islam is often described as abstract, ascetic, and uniquely disengaged from the human body. Scott Kugle refutes this assertion in the first full study of Islamic mysticism as it relates to the human body. Examining Sufi conceptions of the body in religious writings from the late fifteenth through the nineteenth century, Kugle demonstrates that literature from this era often treated saints' physical bodies as sites of sacred power.Sufis and Saints' Bodies focuses on six imp...

Against the sweeping backdrop of South Asian history, this is a story of journeys taken by sixteenth-century reformist Muslim scholars and Sufi mystics from India to Arabia. At the center is the influential Sufi scholar Shaykh ʿAli Muttaqi and his little-known network of disciples. Scott Kugle relates how ʿAli Muttaqi, an expert in Arabic, scriptural hermeneutics, and hadith, left his native South Asia and traversed treacherous seas to make the Hajj to Mecca. Settling in Mecca, he continue...

NOTE: This book has also been published under the title, ***"The Thoughtful Guide to Sufism"***.Sufism is the heart of Islam. This introduction to Sufism describes its origins and practices, its historical background and its spread throughout the world. The Elements of Sufism explains:- Where Sufism originated- The relationship between Islam and Sufism- What it means to be a Sufi- The relevance of Sufism in modern life

The word Babri was literally used to define something abnormal, out of sense or mad. Three instances mentioned in Babar-Nama support this. Babars journal is replete with precise detail with a telling image or idiom as a bud resembling a sheeps heart, fell like water on fire which lingers in the readers mind long after the event or anecdote has receded. Few of the phrases and words in the Babar Nama are now part of everyday language in India and Pakistan as Namak Haram means lack of trustwo...

The headlines are filled with the politics of Islam, but there is another side to the world's fastest-growing religion. Sufism is the poetry and mysticism of Islam. This mystical movement from the early ninth century rejects worship motivated by the desire for heavenly reward or the fear of punishment, insisting rather on the love of God as the only valid form of adoration. Sufism has made significant contributions to Islamic civilization in music and philosophy, dance and literature. The ...

A twentieth-anniversary edition of the fascinating, accessible introduction to Islam with a new preface and study guide, from the #1 bestselling author of ZealotFINALIST FOR THE GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD“Wise and passionate . . . an incisive, scholarly primer in Muslim history and an engaging personal exploration.” —The New York Times Book ReviewTwo decades after its original publication, ...

No religion in the modern world is as feared and misunderstood as Islam. It haunts the popular Western imagination as an extreme faith that promotes authoritarian government, female oppression, civil war, and terrorism. Karen Armstrong's short history offers a vital corrective to this narrow view. The distillation of years of thinking and writing about Islam, it demonstrates that the world's fastest-growing faith is a much richer and more complex phenomenon than its modern fundamentalist s...

A dervish guide to life and love for the twenty-first centuryPart meditation book, part oracle, and part collection of Sufi lore, poetry, and stories, this handbook offers a fresh interpretation of the fundamental spiritual practice found in all ancient and modern Sufi schools—the meditations on the 99 Qualities of Unity.Unlike most books on Sufism, which are primarily collections of translated Sufi texts, The Sufi Book of Life explains how to appl...

Sufism, the Transformation of the Heart gives a clear and accessible outline of Sufism: its basic principles, historical background, and recent development in the West. While exploring the spiritual and psychological processes of transformation, this book offers practical guidelines to help the seeker. Sufism, the Transformation of the Heart is a valuable introduction to a dynamic spiritual path that is attracting growing interest in the West.

An engaging study of Sufi teachings that presents the Sufi way as a universal means of gaining a greater understanding of ourselves, others, and the worldIn Sufi teaching the human heart is not a fanciful metaphor but an objective organ of intuition and perception. It perceives all that is beautiful, lovely, and meaningful in life—and reflects these spiritual qualities in the world, for the benefit of others. Every human heart has the capacity and the destiny to br...