Sufism and the 'Modern' in Islam

Sufism, as a devotional and mystical current within the Islamic tradition, has been subject to the strains of modernization experienced across the Muslim world. Rapidly expanding urban populations, the diffusion of non-religious general education and the natural sciences, the erosion of family and village social hierarchies, the supplanting of royal with popular sovereignty, increased mobility and access to information – all have brought to Muslim communities stresses comparable to those experienced by Western societies in the course of their industrialization.