Yoga and the ‘Pure Muhammadi Path’ of Muhammad Nasir ʿAndalib
This article addresses the question of how early modern Sufis dealt with yoga. Some scholars have argued that a movement of Sufi reform occurred in South Asia during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, representing a shift towards legal Islam, which would call for the rejection of non-Islamic p...
| Authors: | ; |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
MDPI
2024
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| In: |
Religions
Year: 2024, Volume: 15, Issue: 3 |
| Further subjects: | B
Indo-Muslim culture
B pure Muhammadi path B Yoga B Mujaddidiyya B Sufism B India |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Rights Information: | CC BY 4.0 |
| Summary: | This article addresses the question of how early modern Sufis dealt with yoga. Some scholars have argued that a movement of Sufi reform occurred in South Asia during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, representing a shift towards legal Islam, which would call for the rejection of non-Islamic practices. This explanation overlooks the rhetorical construction of Sufi claims of spiritual status and shariʿa legitimacy, and it fails to distinguish eighteenth-century examples from the very different reform movements created in the nineteenth century in response to European colonialism. This article considers as a case study Nala-yi ʿAndalib (“The Nightingale’s Lament”), the central text produced by the pre-colonial founder of the “pure Muhammadi path,” Muhammad Nasir ʿAndalib (d. 1758), with the help of intertextual references to the masterpiece of his son, Khwaja Mir Dard (d. 1785), ʿIlm al-kitab (“Knowledge of the Book”). The consequence of their evaluation of yoga was not the systematic rejection of non-Islamic practices, but a guarded acknowledgement of their efficacy within a framework that used Indic references as a straw man for intra-Islamic debates. |
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| ISSN: | 2077-1444 |
| Access: | Open Access |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Religions
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.3390/rel15030359 |