Alexander Knysh presents “A Clash of Islams: Sufism and Salafism in the Caucasus”

Posted by fliere on Tuesday, December 12, 2017 in Past Events.

Jewish Studies is proud to co-sponsor this talk by Dr. Alexander Knysh from the University of Michigan.

“A Clash of Islams: Sufism and Salafism in the Caucasus”

February 1, 2018, from 4:00-5:30pm.

Center for Second Language Studies, Room 003

Dr. Alexander Knysh (University of Michigan) will give a talk that explores the vicissitudes of Sufism’s recent history in the Muslim republics of Russia’s Northern Caucasus, and shows how Sufism’s status as “a mainstay of the international social order” (per Marshall Hodgson) has come under critical scrutiny as well as verbal and physical attacks from a variety of quarters. Somewhat paradoxically, anti-Sufi discourses have been motivated by its former and recent social, political and cultural prominence in Muslim societies. The most potent challenge to Sufism’s doctrinal and devotional dominance has come from various Salafi (“fundamentalist”) movements. Does this “clash of Islams” represent a re-enactment, in Muslim communities worldwide, of the Protestant Reformation?

Read more about this event here.