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.