An Educational Reading of Sufi Heritage

Author: Dr. Hamed bin Ahmed Al-Iqbālī

While these schools adopted Islam as their primary reference and desired goal, they differed in their understanding of it, their interpretation of its texts, and their extraction of educational perspectives from it. This led to their differentiation, and even their conflict at times, to the point where it was said: "The jurists are the Mujtahids of Islam, the theologians are the Mujtahids of faith, and the Sufis are the Mujtahids of excellence." Whatever the nature of this difference, it was—at its core—an expression of the breadth of the Islamic religion, which accommodated the currents, doctrines, orientations, and schools of thought that emerged from it, all of which contributed to the building of a sophisticated Arab-Islamic civilization.