Islam-Related Movements

I should emphasize that my approach here is historical and sociological rather than religious or theological.

Most or perhaps all of the great ‘world religions’ are actually congeries of separate movements which are linked together by history and tradition. Thus, defining exactly what constitutes Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, or Islam is not straightforward as each of these traditions embraces a diversity of groups of people with sometimes quite contradictory beliefs and practices. This is most obviously seen in the form of sectarianism in which separate churches and sects present themselves as the truest or sometimes as the only true expression of the religion as a whole and condemn rival sects as heretics. Beyond sectarianism, however, there may be groups that although linked to the religion are in some way distinct and separate from it. These are what I have recently termed ‘extramural’ religions religious movements and religious traditions’.

Thus, in Christianity, objective observers find it easy to see Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and the various mainstream Protestant churches as belonging to the same family no matter how bitter the divisions between these groups may have been in the past, but such observers may be less sure whether to include groups such as the Church of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons); the Unitarians; Christian Science; and the Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Christian fold. These groups may describe themselves as Christian but are sufficiently different from the mainstream churches as to seem to require a separate designation. Although related to the Christian tradition, the relationship is complex and distant. Whether or not of their own choosing, such groups exist beyond a conceptual wall which surrounds those churches and sects which are generally seen as part of the main tradition.

In the Islamic World there are also a number of extramural groups which have a distant or ambiguous relationship to the various mainstream sects. We may identify four such streams of ‘Islam-related movements’: (i) a diverse assortment of old Middle Eastern sects; (ii) some modern religious movements with their own prophetic traditions; (iii) various expressions of what I would term Global Sufism; (iv) and African-American groups which have established a heterodox Islamic identity.

Although the diversity of mainstream Islam is considerable, with Sunnis, Shia, and Sufi groups presenting a wide spectrum of practices and belief they’re all united in recognizing Muhammad as God’s last prophet to humankind and in accepting a significant number of shared beliefs and practices as Islamic. What they have in common is greater than what divides them, and leaving aside a relatively small number of extremists who believe that Muslims belonging to other sects are unbelievers, the adherents of the main mainstream sects are willing to see the followers of other sects as fellow Muslims — no matter how reluctantly. This is not a courtesy which they always extend to the Islam-related groups however.

Rejection by mainstream Muslims may not be an adequate base for definition but it is an important indicator of these groups’ separateness. More crucially perhaps are significant deviations from mainstream Muslim belief and practice, particularly non-observance of Islamic holy law, the Sharia, and in some instances the recognition of prophetic figures after Muhammad.

This said it should be noted that most of these groups profess that they are Muslims, the Baha’is being the main exception in proclaiming themselves to be the followers of an independent world religion respectful of but separate from Islam.

1. Pre-modern Middle Eastern sects.

The first stream of movements are a variety of premodern Middle Eastern sects. All have been subject to sometimes savage persecution in the past and have often been secretive about their beliefs and practices. Their origins are often obscure and controversial.

They can be divided into two groups chronologically.

1A. One of the most ancient of these movements is the Yazidis, wrongly stigmatized as devil worshippers by many orthodox Muslims. The movement seems to be a complex synthesis of local pre-Islamic Kurdish beliefs and elements of Sufism, including devotion to the 12th century Sufi Saint Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir. There are now several hundred followers worldwide, including a significant number amongst Kurdish migrants to Germany.

1B. Also ancient are the Nusayris or Alawites, widely believed to have begun as a pre-Islamic religion which later adopted elements of Islam whilst retaining older Gnostic and incarnationist beliefs. They are a major and powerful presence in modern Syria with perhaps 1 million followers.

1C. Also in the Levant, the Druze religion originated in the 11th century, seemingly combining elements of Isma’ili Shi’ism with earlier Gnostic beliefs. They now have about a million adherents across the Levant and in the Levantine diaspora in the West.

1D. Further east, several movements developed in the troubled period of the 14th and 15th centuries combining elements of Sufism, Shi’ism and non-Islamic beliefs, including extremist veneration of the Imam ‘Ali, incarnationism, and the transmigration of souls. These include the Alevis and Bektashis of Turkey, the Kurdish Ahl-e Haqq (People of Truth) and the Hurufi movement originated by Fazlu’llah Astrabadi. Whilst no distinct Hurufi community any longer exists, the Alevis remain a major presence in Turkey and the Turkish diaspora — maybe some 10 to 15 million of them, and have absorbed many elements of Bektashi thought. The Bektashis remain a significant presence in Albania, and the Ahl-e Haqq — about a million or so — in the Kurdish areas of Iran and Iraq.

2. Movements based on the teachings of modern prophetic figures.

The second extramural stream are three 19th century movements based on the teachings of modern prophetic figures. The first two of these movements originated in Iran, with the Babi movement later giving rise to the Baha’i faith, which developed into a self-proclaimed world religion independent of Islam. [See other published work by me]. By contrast, the Ahmadiyya movement, originating with Mirza Ghulam Ahmed in the Punjab in British India has remained far closer to its Islamic Roots, claiming an Islamic identity although rejected by a very large number of mainstream Muslims. Initially laying claim to be a divinely appointed reviver (Mujadid) of Islam, Ghulam Ahmed attracted a following, and in 1889 in inaugurated a distinct Ahmadiyya community, later advancing the further claims to be the Mahdi and Messiah. He also taught that in this age jihad (holy struggle) was to be by debate and not by the sword, and that the Hindu figure of Krishna was a divine prophet. He and his followers actively engaged Christian and Hindu missionaries in argument, and his followers were amongst the first to seek to spread Islam to the West. Most mainstream Muslims condemned him however.

In 1914, the Ahmadiyya movement split into two separate groups over questions of leadership and doctrine, the larger group, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, originally centred in Qadian in the Punjab, but with its world centre now in England, saw Ghulam Ahmed as a new prophet and followed a succession of his descendants as the caliphs. The smaller group, the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement for the Propagation of Islam, rejected these new caliphs, and saw Ghulam Ahmed as merely the renewer of Islam, interpreting his higher claims in symbolic terms and gaining some acceptance by mainstream Muslims.

Both groups conducted extensive missionary activity both in British India and overseas, but it is the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community which has been the more successful, now with a substantial following worldwide of several million people.

The Ahmadis have suffered considerable persecution and violence in Pakistan.

3. ‘Universalistic’ Sufi movements.

 Thirdly, we have the development of a variety of movements linked to Sufism but going beyond the Islamic mainstream. Varying greatly in their beliefs and practices, the Sufi orders have long been an important part of Islam life and missionary outreach, but they have often been characterized by a relative de-emphasis, or in some cases, even disregard for Islamic law and a tolerance of diversity of belief, including the incorporation or acceptance of indigenous pre-Islamic themes in some cultures. These trends have been greatly enhanced in situations in which Sufism spread in non-Islamic countries, notably in recent times with the expansion of Sufism in the West. This originated with the teachings of Inayat Khan, an Indian Sufi master in the inclusivist Chishti tradition, who travelled to Europe and North America in the early part of the 20th century and established the Sufi order in the West in London in 1914, the ancestor of the contemporary Universal Sufism movement, now found in a number of Western countries.

As with a number of later Sufi movements in the West, Universal Sufism clearly transcends its Islamic Roots, accepting followers who are not Muslims and not imposing the requirements of Islamic law.

Since World War II, large-scale migration from various Muslim countries to the West has also led to the establishment of more traditional Sufi orders in North America and Europe so that there is now a wide span of Sufi movements, ranging from those which are clearly Islamic to those which form part of the eclectic New Age approach to religion, and including some such as the movement founded by Bawa Muhaiyaddeen in the United States which act as a bridge between the two orientations.

Sufi ideas have also had a wider non-institutional impact in the West amongst non-Muslims through the writings of modern Sufi-inspired thinkers such as Idris Shah and the diffusion of the writings of Jalal’u-din Rumi, the great medieval Sufi.

4. African-American expressions of Islam.

Finally, there has been the growth of distinctively African-American expressions of Islam. There had been a significant number of Muslims amongst the enslaved Africans forcibly transported to the Americas, but in the oppressed conditions of their lives Islamic institutions had not been established and it was not until the Great Northern migration of black Americans in the early 20th century that Muslim-inspired movements developed, coming to express both racial pride and the alienation of African-Americans from the environing white society which marginalized, persecuted, and disparaged them.

The first of these movements was the Moorish Science Temple of America founded in New Jersey in 1913 by the prophet Noble Drew Ali, which continued to draw a significant number of followers up until the 1960s.

Of far greater impact has been the Nation of Islam, popularly known as the Black Muslims, founded in Detroit in 1930 by Wallace Fard Muhammad, and promulgated by one of his first disciples, Elijah Muhammad, who proclaimed that Fard had been God in person and himself assumed a prophetic role. Rejecting white society, the Nation of Islam promoted black nationalism and separatism, establishing its own economic and educational institutions, but did not require its members to follow much of Islamic law and practice. Elijah Muhammad’s own son and successor Warith Deen Mohammad and one of his chief lieutenants, Malcolm X, both wished to integrate the movement more closely with mainstream Islam, but many of the followers rejected these movements, ultimately giving their allegiance to Louis Farakhan, the current head of a revived Nation of Islam.

These four streams of religiosity indicate the diversity as well as the strength of extramural religion in the Islamic world. Several of these movements continue to be extremely dynamic in the modern world and several continue to be persecuted. There is an extensive academic bibliography of some of these movements, and I give a few of the main references in my article in the Sage Encyclopedia of Global Studies to which I refer you.

For the original article see: Peter Smith. ‘Islam-related movements’. Helmut K. Anheier and Mark Juergensmeyer (eds.) Encyclopedia of Global Studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2012. sk.sagepub.com/ency/edvol/globalstudies/toc