Modernity from Within: Islamic Fundamentalism and Sufism

Islamic fundamentalism is a product of modernity. Its constitution as the hegemonic discourse of modern Islam was accomplished in the course of the twentieth century over against two Others: the external Other of the West and the internal Other of tradition, especially its mystical aspect – Sufism. The article claims, however, that the fundamentalists’ critique of Sufism as backward, superstitious and apolitical involved the collective forgetting of the leading role that Sufi reformist brotherhoods had filled in pre-modern Islam and in their own upbringing. In this light, the Salafi discourse and popular socio-religious movements such as the Muslim Brothers appear as modern transformations rather than negations of Sufism. On the o