Islam in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives - Islamic Books ...

2 4Islam i n World Cult u r e sMovements for Renewal and ReformThese later expansions of Islam did not follow on the heels of military conquest.Rather, Islam spread through generally peaceful penetration of everwideningfrontiers along global and regional trade routes. Throughout themedieval period, many of the most important sea lanes and overland caravanroutes in Asia and Africa were dominated by Muslim merchants. After the thirteenthcentury, Arab and Persian Muslims from the Central Lands of Islam increasinglytraveled to seek their fortunes, and they even established families innewly Muslim lands far from the tradition’s historical centers in the MiddleEast. At that time, the leading edges of this expansion were rapidly movingsouthward along both the east and west coasts of Africa, northeastward intoCentral Asia, and southeastward through India and into the Indonesian archipelago.Among the growing number of Muslim travelers in this period weremerchants and scholars, some of whom were often also members of Sufi orders.However, the spread of Islam along these avenues was in no way an organizedmovement like modern Christian missionary enterprises. Rather, thespread of Islam into Asia and Africa most often occurred through gradual andinformal processes, such as the formation of business partnerships and politicalaffiliations, as well as through intermarriage. Thus, increasingly closer tieswere forged between local populations of the frontiers and the Muslims whohad come there during the expansion of Islam in the late medieval period.It was only later, if at all, that organized Islamic religious associations playeda significant role in the further Islamization of some areas already at least nominallyconverted, both within the Middle East and farther afield. In the eighteenthcentury, a new stream of developments in the history of Sufi orders, aphenomenon that some modern scholars have referred to as neo-Sufism, contributedto these developments. A number of Sufi orders were transformedthrough organizational restructuring and through an increasingly activist orientation.Much of this energy was directed toward reestablishing Sufism as the“way of Muhammad” (tariqa Muhammadiyyah).This reformation of Islamic mystical tradition involved various means ofdeepening one’s personal relationship to the Prophet of Islam in order to arriveat a more certain type of religious knowledge. Sometimes this knowledgecame from visionary experiences or dreams in which Sufi masters weregiven special teachings by the Prophet Muhammad himself. The institutionalframeworks of the new Sufi orders then helped spread these teachingsacross wide areas of the Muslim world, thus playing an important role in thedevelopment of Islamic reformism in the eighteenth century.During that period of Islamic history, movements for religious reform wereof many types, both Sufi and non-Sufi. The one that is best remembered todayis that of the Wahhabis, a movement of scripturalist reformism that came