ニュース

国際ワークショップ「エジプトのスーフィズム」

　「スーフィー・聖者研究会」（SIAS3/KIAS4連携研究会）では、Sayyid/Sharif国際会議（9/22-23於東京大学東洋文化研究所）のために来日されるMichael Winter博士（テルアビブ大学）とValerie Hoffman博士（イリノイ大学）をお招きし、エジプトのスーフィズムをテーマとした国際ワークショップを開催いたします。
　Michael Winter博士はオスマン朝期エジプトのスーフィズムや民衆文化をご専門としており、特にシャアラーニーの研究がよく知られています。代表的な著作としてはSociety and Religion in early Ottoman Egypt: Studies in the Writings of ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Sharani (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1982)、Egyptian Society under Ottoman Rule, 1517-1798 (London: Routledge, 1992)があります。
　Valerie Hoffman博士は現代エジプトのスーフィズムに関するフィールド調査を行い、その成果をまとめたSufism, Mystics, and Saints in Modern Egypt (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995)がスーフィズム研究者の間ではよく知られています。またエジプト以外にもオマーン、イエメン、ザンジバルなどをフィールドとして、イスラームやジェンダーをテーマとした研究を行っています。
　今回の研究会では、このお二人の方に、エジプトのスーフィズムについて、それぞれ歴史的視点と人類学的視点からご発表をお願いしました。ぜひ奮ってご参加ください。

　　　　　　　記

日時：2009年9月26日（土）13:30～18:00
場所：上智大学2号館630a会議室
http://www.sophia.ac.jp/J/sogo.nsf/Content/access_yotsuya
http://www.sophia.ac.jp/J/sogo.nsf/Content/campusmap_yotsuya

発表：
Michael Winter (Professor Emeritus, Tel Aviv University, Israel)
　"Sufism in Ottoman Egypt: Religious and Social Aspects"
Valerie Hoffman (Associate Professor, University of Illinois, USA)
　"What Role Can Sufism Play in Contemporary Egypt?"

＊発表は英語で行われます。
＊会場準備の都合上、ご参加いただける方は、下記の事務局までご連絡ください。

発表要旨：
Michael Winter, "Sufism in Ottoman Egypt: Religious and Social Aspects"
　Sufism in Ottoman Egypt was orthodox, that means Shari‘a-abiding, and its mysticism not too much removed from the mainstream theology. Unlike the Shari‘a, mysticism was by definition more vague, and open to many interpretations, some of them subjective. As I will try to show, Sufism developed over time.
　Generally, the Sufi movement in Egypt (and in other Ottoman provinces) was a success story, gaining the support of both the common people and the rulers. Sufism had been gaining influence even before the Ottoman conquest of 1517, but it was under Ottoman rule when it was becoming stronger, and started to infiltrate even into the ranks of the ‛ulama’.
　It is significant that the most important writer on religion in the sixteenth century was a Sufi shaykh, ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Sha‘rani (d. 1565). His writings represent the Egyptian brand of Sufism: orthodox, cautious, popular, apologetic, and with genuine concern for the social and spiritual conditions of the simple people. Al-Sha‘rani, like other Sufis of his milieu, struggled on two fronts: he was a scholar and attacked the unruly dervish orders, describing them as boorish, without respect for the Shari‘a law and for the ‛ulama’. On the other hand, he criticized the ‛ulama’—particularly the fuqaha’ (jurisconsults) -- for their narrow and barren erudition, with no understanding of the moral and spiritual dimension of Islam that only Sufism can give. He lived in his large zawiya (Sufi convent) and looked at the al-Azhar madrasa-mosque critically.
　One of the divisive issues of Islam was the personality and monistic doctrines of Muhyi’l-Din Ibn al-‛Arabi, the famous Andalusian mystic (d. 1240, in Damascus). The orthodox regarded Ibn al-‘Arabi's views as infidelity, yet several outstanding ‛ulama’ and Sufis admired him. Al-Sha‘rani defended and interpreted his works, but he did it apologetically. The Ottomans officially approved of Ibn al-‘Arabi's mysticism; his writings were far more popular among the Turks than among the Arabs.
　The most important chronicler in Egypt in the seventeenth century was Muhammad ibn bi’l-Surur al-Bakri al-Siddiqi (d. after 1161), a member of a distinguished family of ‛ulama’ and Sufis who were active in Egypt's religious and public life from the fifteenth until the mid-twentieth century. In Ottoman Egypt, the family was rich and privileged and maintained good relations with the political and scholarly elite, hence al-Bakri's enthusiastic support of the Ottoman state and dynasty. Unlike al-Sha‘rani, a village boy, al-Bakri al-Siddiqi was fully integrated in the scholarly and social establishment.
　There is clear evidence that in the eighteenth century Sufism made further inroads into al-Azhar. In a few cases when Turkish Qadizadeli fundamentalists attacked in Cairo, sometimes violently, Sufi popular customs and rituals, the chief Azhari shaykhs came to the rescue of the Sufis with fatwas issued by all the four madhhabs.
　The strongest proof to the victory of (orthodox) Sufism in Ottoman Egypt was the rise of the Khalwati tariqa. This order, which was imported from the Turkish regions, was considered by al-Sha‘rani as learned in the writings of Ibn al-‘Arabi, but as lax in performing the religious ordinances. Owing to the reform (toward orthodoxy) which the Khalwatiyya underwent during the eighteenth century, it became the favorite tariqa of the ‛ulama’, to which all of the shuyukh al-Azhar (rectors) adhered. Al-Jabarti, the famous chronicler, who was very orthodox, had high praise for this tariqa. At the same time, he describes the unruly, uncouth tariqas of the dervishes, as devilish orders, turuq shaytaniyya.

Valerie Hoffman "What Role Can Sufism Play in Contemporary Egypt?"
　It is now commonly acknowledged among scholars of contemporary Islam in Egypt that Islamism has been mainstreamed. On one hand, its perspectives have been broadly accepted by the Muslim population, 93% of whom, according to a survey conducted in 1996-97, believe that Muslim society must be based on Shari‘a law. Political elites are compelled to adopt religious discourse in order to regain moral mastery over society and secure political legitimacy. On the other hand, most Egyptian Muslims disapprove of extremism, and the leaders of Egypt’s most prominent Islamist groups have renounced violence and work within the political system. Whereas in the 1970s Muslim Brotherhood literature depicted democracy as a Western institution made redundant by the superior system of Islam and argued that women’s innate emotionality made them unfit to participate in elections, let alone assume important public offices, younger leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood responded to the public demand for democracy in Egypt by identifying Islam with such global values as democracy, pluralism, and rights for women and minorities. In spite of the expressly undemocratic aspects of the writings of Sayyid Qutb and other prominent Islamist ideologues, in the last ten to fifteen years Islamists have become vocal proponents of democracy, because they are the primary victims of its absence. Egyptian Muslims appear unaware of any conflict between human rights and the Shari‘a: the Gallup world poll indicates that 97% say that the Shari‘a provides justice for women and protects human rights, and 85% say that the Shari‘a protects minorities; 94% of Egyptian Muslims favor freedom of speech, religion and assembly. Ironically, in an authoritarian state where human rights are often violated and where Islamists in the 1990s attacked advocates of human rights as apostates, many express support for Islamist ideals and human rights, and government-issued school textbooks on Islam also expressly uphold democracy and human rights, not only asserting their compatibility with Islam, but crediting Islam with originating these global concepts.
　In a society has broadly accepted aspects of Islamist ideology as well as many global values, where Sufism and saint veneration have been attacked for more than a century by secularists, modernists and Islamists, where the Sufi Orders were broadly seen as the province of the uneducated, and where even the term “Sufism” is often unknown or misunderstood, what role does Sufism play, and what relevance can it have in the public debates over the place of Islam and human rights in modern Muslim society? In my book, Sufism, Mystics and Saints in Modern Egypt, I affirmed Sufism’s continued vitality and appeal to many educated as well as uneducated Egyptians, and pointed out that Sufism and Islamism are not always mutually exclusive categories, and that some Sufi-oriented religious leaders are not recognized as such by the general public. In addition to such considerations, in my presentation for this workshop, as a result of interviews conducted in Egypt in 2008, I will also discuss the role of Sufi-oriented groups and individuals in promoting new interpretations of Islam that are openly critical of traditional limitations on women’s rights and espouse varying degrees of theological pluralism based on an explicitly Sufi perspective.