Cont Islam

DOI 10.1007/s11562-017-0401-y

Metaphors and paradoxes: secrecy, power

and subjectification in Sufi initiation in Aleppo, Syria

Paulo G. Pinto 1

# Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2017

Abstract Based fieldwork in Aleppo between 1999 and 2010, this article
analyzes how secrecy and revelation, two forms of codification, maintenance
and transmission of religious knowledge central to the mystical tradition of
Sufism in contemporary Syria were constructed and enacted in the process of
initiation (tarbiyya) into the mystical path in two Sufi zawiyas (ritual lodges) in
pre-war Aleppo. Access to the unseen spheres of divine reality through initia-
tion created both structures of charismatic power in the Sufi communities and
religious subjectivities that empowered its holders as moral agents in the pre-
civil war Syrian public sphere. I argue that Sufi practices of initiation that
gradually revealed the divine reality to students while simultaneously also
enhanced the mystery of this reality enabled Sufi practitioners to cope with
the opacity of power and contradictions of everyday life of late-Ba‘thist mo-
dernity in Syria.

Keywords Sufism . Syria . Initiation . Secrecy . Subjectification . Power . Metaphors .

Paradoxes

Introduction

Sufi religiosity in pre-civil war Syria provided its adepts with experiential
notions of an unseen realm of divine truth and reality that worked as a source
of blessings, morality and empowerment in ordinary life. This sphere of divine
presence where power and truth are expressions of God’s reality was referred to
in most Islamic traditions, both Sufi and non-Sufi ones, as part of al-ghayb, the
invisible realm where the mysteries of existence have their meaning revealed.

* Paulo G. Pinto
philu99@gmail.com

1
Department of Anthropology, University Federal Fluminense, Niterói, Brazil
 Cont Islam

However, the Sufis in pre-war Aleppo only occasionally dealt with the realm of
the unseen through the term al-ghayb, for they usually focused on the haqiqa1
(divine reality) which they saw as its essence. Only the shaykhs would make
more general references to al-ghayb, with the members of the Sufi communities
almost always focusing on the haqiqa instead. For them the haqiqa constituted
the core and the ultimate source of al-ghayb which, despite encompassing the
former, was seen as an expression of it. Because of this conceptualization of
the realm of the unseen among Sufis in pre-war Aleppo, I will only deal here
with their constructions and experiential connections to the haqiqa.
Like al-ghayb, the realm of the haqiqa was conceived by the Sufis shaykhs and their
disciples in pre-war Aleppo as being immersed in secrecy. However, its secret character
was defined by the fact that not only it was hidden from ordinary perception but also
because it could only be accessed through the acquisition of esoteric knowledge which
was also defined as secret (sirri) and should remain as such in order to have efficacy.
The general secret that separated the adepts of a Sufi shaykh from other Muslims was
their understanding of the workings of haqiqa. These Sufis considered their knowledge
about the divine truth to be more precise and real than the one that might exist among
non-Sufis and, even, adepts of other Sufi shaykhs. Because of that, they often used the
term khasat al-din (the religious elite) to describe themselves.
Nevertheless, there were other levels of secrecy that were produced by the various
degrees and forms of knowing the realm of haqiqa within the Sufi communities in pre-
war Aleppo. The religious hierarchies that organized the Sufi communities - which
separated the disciples of the shaykh who were initiated in the Sufi path from the non-
initiated adepts, as well as classified the disciples according to their advancement into
the path - corresponded to the layers of secrecy created by the discrete forms of
knowledge of haqiqa that existed among their members. Consequently, the shaykh’s
knowledge of haqiqa, which was supposedly the more complete and concrete of them
all, was considered to be the greatest secret of all and it was referred as the shaykh’s
secret (sirr al-shaykh).
Therefore we can say that in this religious context secrecy was the very condition for
the existence of the haqiqa as an object of knowledge and source of power. This realm
of unseen divine reality worked as the locus of supreme power that, while hidden from
the public gaze, informed the actions and the positioning of religious actors in the
public sphere. In Ba‘thist Syria, the power of the haqiqa was conceived by the Sufis as
being stronger than the power of the state, allowing them to gain autonomy and
confidence in the Syrian public sphere, where the regime aimed to establish an all-
encompassing presence. Also, the acquisition of esoteric knowledge and the experience
of the haqiqa through mystical states empowered the adepts of Sufism to cope with and
reposition themselves in relation to the social hierarchies and the cultural expectations
that organized social life in pre-war Aleppo.
This dynamic parallels Georg Simmel’s remarks on the relations between secrecy
and public life in early twentieth-century Imperial Germany, for even in a public sphere

1
The arabic word haqiqa means both Btruth^ and Breality^ and it was used in Sufi contexts in pre-war Aleppo
to express the fact that the ultimate and, actually, only reality and, truth was God. For them all the sensible and
material world and the knowledge and certainties that it generated constituted lesser and incomplete forms of
existence that both reflected and hid the haqiqa.
Cont Islam

heavily invested by state power, such as in Ba‘thist Syria, the layers of secrecy that
emanated from the haqiqa offered, as in Simmel’s formulation, Bthe possibility of a
second world alongside the manifest world; and the latter is decisively influenced by
the former^ (Simmel 1950 [1908]: 330). We can push Simmel’s argument further,
pointing that in the case of the Sufis in pre-war Aleppo the haqiqa created not only a
collective source of empowerment, but also the possibility of moral individuation of the
religious agents, for they could access the esoteric realities encapsulated in secrecy
according to their mastering of the esoteric knowledge that constituted the Sufi path.
This article analyzes how the access to the unseen spheres of divine reality (haqiqa)
through initiation in the Sufi path created both structures of charismatic power in the Sufi
communities, as well as religious subjectivities that empowered their holders as moral
agents in the pre-civil war Syrian public sphere. The main argument here is that Sufi
initiation practices that gradually revealed the divine reality also worked to enhance its
mystery, allowing the logic of secrecy to reproduce itself through the very diffusion of Sufi
knowledge in Syrian society. Mystical initiation thereby became a powerful tool for the
construction of religious subjectification and social imaginaries in late-Ba‘thist Syria.
Since 2011 Aleppo has been tragically affected by the violent government repression
of the civil and armed uprising against Bashar al-Asad’s rule, as well as the brutal civil
war that unfolded from it. Aleppo’s unique architectural and social fabric was largely
destroyed and the religious life of the Sufi communities in the city was disrupted and
torn apart by violence, persecution, radicalization and exile of their members. Since the
beginning of the conflict the Sufi shaykhs referred in this article condemned the
violence unleashed by regime but also told their disciples and followers to not get
involved in the protests or the armed struggle, for they did not identify with the political
agendas of the opposition and also referred to the brutal repression by the Ba‘thist
regime of the uprising led by the Muslim Brothers between 1979 and 1982.
Nevertheless, the Sufi contexts analyzed here shaped the subjectivities and social
trajectories of many pious Sunnis in Aleppo before and during the current conflict, and
they informed their trajectories during the conflict and in situations of exile and refuge
since 2011. Therefore, these Sufi religious subjectivities, albeit reconfigured by the new
contexts in which they are lived, might play a role in the reconstitution of Aleppo’s
social life. Since the military conquest by the regime of the parts of the city that were
under control of the armed groups of the opposition in December 2016 this process is
slowly going on in a context of ongoing violence and strong repression.

Secrecy and hierarchical individuation in the Sufi initiation

The public autonomy of the moral agents produced by the process of Sufi initiation was
coupled to the hierarchical link that connected the disciple and his shaykh,2 who was the
necessary mediator and guide in the path towards the haqiqa. Sufi subjectivities allowed
their holders to act as autonomous moral actors, as they were empowered by a personal
connection to the divine reality, at the same time that they were shaped by the religious
hierarchies and power relations which linked the disciple to the figure of the shaykh.

2
My fieldwork was exclusively with the male disciples and followers of the Sufi shaykhs in pre-war Aleppo,
for I had no access to the universe of female Sufis.
 Cont Islam

In order to understand this kind of hierarchical individuation we have to look at the

transactions in secrecy and revelation that shaped it in the process of Sufi initiation.
Therefore the analysis will look to the initiation process in two Sufi communities in
pre-war Aleppo. One community was led by shaykh Badinjki, who was linked to the
tariqa3 Qadiriyya, and the other was led by shaykh Nadim, who was linked to tariqa
Shadhiliyya.4 Sufi initiation in these zawiyas was structured by the tension between the
urge to pass esoteric knowledge to the disciples in order to keep the Sufi tradition alive,
and the continuous construction of extra layers of secrecy connected to its mystical
nature. This tension was in resolved by the use of an epistemology of secrecy in which
the successive revelations that the adept experienced as he advanced never added up to
a cumulative and linear progression towards the truth for they often had no logical
connection to each other, and sometimes even contradicted each other.
Also, the revelations were never pedagogically explained or argumentatively ex-
posed, but rather hinted through metaphors or puzzling paradoxes coupled with the
induction of embodied experiences in the disciples. The use of metaphors and para-
doxes in the process of communication of the esoteric dimension of the Sufi path
produced the apparent contradiction that secrecy and invisibility were reinforced by the
very act of Bunveiling^ the reality that they were obscuring. Therefore, all esoteric
insight was necessarily the comprehension of an aspect of the divine reality that was by
necessity partial and therefore potentially even a distorted image of the haqiqa in its
unfathomable entirety.
The process of initiation was structured by some characteristics of Sufi esoteric
knowledge. The main one was that secrecy and mystery were not produced by the
withdrawal of relevant or truthful information, but by the very act of presenting and
revealing it. This apparently paradoxical aspect of Sufism is analogous to many
characteristics of modernity, for the contemporary practices of Btransparency^ also
produce spheres of power that remain as unseen objects of speculation (Sanders and
West 2003). The persistence and expansion of Sufism in contemporary Syria shows
that, despite the common view that it would decline or disappear with the moderniza-
tion of society, the combination of revelation and secrecy allowed Sufi religiosity to
adapt to the contradictions of Syrian modernity.
Sufi forms of secrecy were produced by the very idioms used to communicate
aspects of the esoteric truth, as they shaped forms of thinking and organizing experi-
ence in a way that it could not be shared through language and, therefore, cannot be
objectified as public discourse. Knowledge about the hidden reality of the haqiqa was
embodied as individual experiences that shared very little commensurability as their
cognitive references were conveyed through metaphors and paradoxes rather than
explanatory discourse.

3
The Arabic word tariqa, which is usually translated as BSufi order^, refers to three distinct, albeit
complementary, realities: the mystical path toward the divine reality (haqiqa); the set of doctrines, rituals
and practices that constitute the mystical path; the institutionalized forms of religious organization of a
particular Sufi tradition.
4
The ethnographic data analyzed here were collected during a period of 18 months of fieldwork in Aleppo
from 1999 to 2001, and in shorter yearly fieldwork periods from 2002 to 2010. After some months of my first
period of fieldwork I was accepted by some shaykhs into the practices of initiation of their disciples into the
Sufi path.
Cont Islam

While metaphors and paradoxes were present in various combinations in all Sufi
initiations to which I had access, they produced quite different economies of secrecy.
Some produced mystification and secrecy through an excess of meaning, other through
contradiction and disjuncture. These different initiation idioms in turn produced dis-
crete configurations of power and subjectification, resulting in a great variation of the
forms of hierarchical individuation that were expressed in the Syrian public sphere.
In each zawiya (Sufi lodge) an epistemology of secrecy was played and enacted
differently, while both shaykhs used metaphors and paradoxes to convey the mysteries
of Sufi esoteric knowledge to their disciples. Shaykh Nadim, while using metaphoric
speech, emphasized mainly the force of paradox - with a succession of revelations that
constantly announced new secrets - as a disciplinary mechanism aimed to reconfigure
the self of his disciples, 5 who were often faced with senseless, contradictory or
humiliating tasks as part of their process of initiation. Shaykh Badinjki emphasized less
paradox than the metaphorical aspect of the esoteric truth, which was only fully grasped
when it ceased to be intellectually constructed and became experientially grounded.
In both cases the initiation worked through a set of embodied experiences, which
were mobilized to unsettle and reconfigure the sense of self of the disciples or to
gradually individuate the disciple and reposition his self in the world. However, before
going into the ethnographic details of the initiation process as it was constructed and
enacted by each one of the shaykhs, we must look at the state constructions of
modernity and their impact on Sufism in the contemporary Syrian society.

Ubiquity and opacity: (in)visibility and power in Syrian modernity

Sufism and Sufi-related forms of religiosity, such as the cult of saints, were pervasive in
the Syrian religious landscape. Most ‘ulama and shaykhs had been initiated into Sufism
or acted as religious leaders of Sufi communities, making Sufi understandings of Islam
a shared religious language among the Syrian religious elite.6 Also, vernacular religious
practices that could be found across the Syrian class spectrum - such as the cult of
saints, religious healing, or the use of protective amulets – were often connected to Sufi
religious contexts.
However, since the emergence of the Syrian nation-state in 1946, Sufism was seen
with a mix of suspicion and dispisal, as an Birrational^ and Bbackwards^ form of
religiosity that was destined to disappear as the forces of modernization and rational-
ization of the Syrian society entered the religious sphere. The constitution of the Syrian
nation-state was informed by ideas of rationality and visibility as the fundamental
elements of modernity. Therefore, Sufism could not be integrated into the national
project, which led to the exclusion of Sufi religious practices from the bureaucratic

5
Talal Asad pointed to discipline as Bthe multiple ways in which religious discourses regulate, inform and
construct religious selves^ (Asad 1993: 125).
6
The two recent occupants of the office of Mufti of Syria, who is the leader of the official religious
establishment of Sunni Islam in the country, shaykh Ahmad Kuftaru (1964–2004) and shaykh Ahmad Badr
al-Din Hassun (since 2005), were Sufi shaykhs linked to the tariqa Naqshbandiyya. Their Sufi affiliations,
which were shared by many other members of the religious elite, were not officially recognized by the state.
However, they show the importance of Sufism in the constitution of the authority of the religious specialists in
pre-war Syria.
 Cont Islam

organization of the Islamic religious practices by the Ministry of Awqaf (Pious Endow-
ments).7
Despite the rhetoric of rationality and visibility, the modernization project of the
Syrian state did not produce the contemporary ideal of Btransparency^ that inhabits
Western political cosmologies of modernity (Sanders and West 2003: 1–3), but rather
generated practices of ubiquity that tried to make society more visible and accessible to
state power. This development became more pronounced after establishment of the
Ba‘thist regime in 1963, and even more after the ascension of Hafiz al-Asad to power in
1970. Indeed the internal mechanisms of power of the Ba‘thist regime were quite
opaque to most Syrians, with the alternation in power being achieved through conspir-
acies and internal coups in 1966 and 1970 as well as through constant purges in the
army and state bureaucracy (Van Dam 1997).
Conversely the regime created an impressive intelligence service/security force
(mukhabarat) with a vast network of informers and several agencies specialized in
surveilling specific social segments or activities (Palestinians, the military, civilians,
political speech or action, etc.), which aimed to render visible to power the aspects of
Syrian society that were not necessarily accessible to the public gaze. In this sense, the
regime created a presence that could not be seen but could be Bfelt^ everywhere,
producing an invisible ubiquity of the state power in the everyday life of Syrian society
(George 2003).
However, opacity also meant that vast surfaces of power had to be visible, such as
the cult of personality that was created by Hafiz al-Asad (1970–2000) and continued
under the presidency of his son and successor, Bashar al-Asad. Portraits, statues and
murals that depicted the president in squares, public buildings, shops, markets and
mosques, were coupled with slogans declaring love and allegiance to him on walls or
banners hanging alongside streets and roads all around the country, 8 creating an
ubiquity of state power through the conspicuous visibility of its leader. As political
action is oriented by the way people conceive connections between the surface of
power and its depths (Sanders and West 2003: 16), the omnipresent iconic representa-
tions of power constituted important loci understanding power and politics in Ba‘thist
Syria.
Despite the formal or pragmatic adherence to the cult of the president most Syrians
considered it to be a shell that hid the realities of power, and usually dealt with it with
high levels of cynicism, disbelief and irony (Wedeen 1999: 67–142). Public acquies-
cence to the regime and its leader has always been coupled in Syria with the constant
production of rumors, gossips and jokes about the president, his family and the agents
of the state. These discursive devices often offered moral comments on the holders of
power and their agents creating a Bcommunity of scandal^ by the exposure of the
supposed misdeeds or incompetence of the powerful, reversing power hierarchies and
restoring the boundaries between state and society (Gluckman 1963: 312–314; Wedeen
1999: 87–88). These oblique forms of comment and critique, which were often

7
The Ministry of Awqaf was created in 1961 as the result of the process of taking over of the Islamic pious
endowments (waqf; pl. awqaf) by the state, which started in 1949 aiming to establish a bureaucratic control
over the Sunni religious establishment (Bottcher 1997: 18–19).
8
Since 2011 the pictorial and discursive signs of allegiance or submission to the president’s power have been
systematically destroyed in the regions controlled by the various groups that compose the opposition to the
Ba‘thist regime.
Cont Islam

mobilized in private conversations in Syria, also claimed to provide those who share
them with information or points of view that supposedly were not available in the
public discourse. In this sense, they aimed to make the surface of power Btranslucent^
in order to reveal shadows of the internal machinations of power, making the realities of
power Bneither transparent nor opaque, neither in plain sight nor hidden from the
view^ (Comaroff and Comaroff 2003: 293).
Rumor, gossip and irony also undermined the possibility of trust in both official
discourse and state institutions, which were often portrait in these discursive frame-
works as being false, corrupt and inefficient. This rhetoric of suspicion challenged and
disrupted the discourse of modernity and national unity of the regime, putting it outside
the circuits of trust present in the Syrian society.9 While trust was always an important
value in Syrian social relations, it was selectively distributed through a combination of
ties of affinity (friendship) and belonging (family, religious community, etc.) and face
to face interactions. Even close acquaintances or relatives could be excluded from
circuits of trust after being targeted by rumors or gossip about their supposed collab-
oration with the surveillance apparatus of the regime. Thus, the diffuse use of suspicion
and a selective distribution of trust restored the opacity of large portions of Syrian
social life, neutralizing or challenging the practices of surveillance and control of the
Ba‘thist regime.
In this context Sufism thrived in its relative invisibility to power, instead of declining
as the modernistic narrative of the Syrian state had predicted. Sufi religiosity became an
important force in the affirmation of Sunni Islam in the late-twentieth/early twenty-first
century Syrian public sphere. Sufi production of secrecy through revelation mirrored
the opacity of the workings of power inscribed in the practices of ubiquity of the Syrian
state, making Sufism quite adaptable to the challenges created by Ba‘thist constructions
of state-sponsored modernity in Syria. While the unseen realities of power were
mediated by a charismatic leader in both Sufism and the Ba‘thist political culture, the
former also offered a path for gradual approach to this secret reality which, at least in
theory, could lead to a direct access to the essence of power.
The fact that Sufi forms of Islam were not under the direct control of the state made
Sufi religiosity become an alternative to the state-sanctioned religious practices. Surely
Sufi communities and their rituals were under surveillance from security agents, but
they could disrupt or negotiate it in various levels which ranged from bureaucratic
corruption of the intelligence services to the Sufi practices of secrecy. The hierarchical
structure of closed circles that were only accessible through initiation, the metaphorical
and fragmented character of the religious discourse and the fact that secrecy was not
created by hiding of withdrawing information, but by encoding it into experiential and
embodied idioms also protected Sufi communities in Syria from the intrusive gaze of
the state.
While the invisible source of truth and power in these communities - the haqiqa -
escaped scrutiny and control, it was available to their members through the blessings
derived from the shaykh’s baraka and through gradual initiation into the Sufi path. The
power of the haqiqa was made manifest in figure of the shaykh, who was the supreme
source of knowledge, guidance and blessings, and in the public moral performances of

9
On the disruptive effect of suspicion on the discourse of transparency and practices of power of modernizing
and globalizing institutions see Sanders and West 2003: 11–12.
 Cont Islam

those who were initiated in the Sufi path. Sufi conceptions of the haqiqa turned into
experiential realities within the framework of the master/disciple relation worked as the
invisible sources of religious subjectivity and empowerment that informed the public
performances of the members of the Sufi communities.

BThe Haqiqa is everywhere, but nobody can see it^

Shaykh Badinjki came from a family of rural shaykhs connected to the tariqa Rifa‘iyya
who became linked to the tariqa Qadiriyya when they settled in Aleppo in the
nineteenth century. 10 Shaykh Badinjki’s charismatic authority was expressed in the
diverse social origin of his followers and disciples. 11 Around 250 men gathered for
shaykh Badinjki’s weekly dhikr. While most of them were residents of Bab al-Nayrab -
a popular neighborhood in the outskirts of Aleppo’s Old City where the zawiya was
located - or merchants in the suq al-madina, Aleppo’s main bazaar, there were also
university professors, high-rank bureaucrats and wealthy entrepreneurs among them. In
2010 shaykh Badinjki had 20 disciples in various stages of initiation in the Sufi path.
Shaykh Nadim was a well-known and respected religious scholar (‘alim) and
preacher in a mosque in the middle-class neighborhood of Sabil. He was affiliated to
the tariqa Shadhiliyya and presided over Sufi rituals in the premises of his mosque.
Shaykh Nadim’s disciples and followers were mostly upper middle-class young pro-
fessionals and academics, with some employees in the state bureaucracy and in
commerce. His religious community gathered between 50 and 80 participants in the
dhikr performances, 7 of whom were being initiated into the Sufi path by the shaykh in
2010.
Both shaykh Badinjki and shaykh Nadim made a clear distinction between a murid
(disciple), who they defined as those who entered the process of initiation (tarbiyya),12
and the rest of the members of their communities, who they usually referred simply as
mu‘minun (believers). The process initiation into the Sufi path - which was referred by
both the shaykhs and their followers as tarbiyyat al-nafs (education of the self),
tarbiyyat al-ruhiyya (spiritual education) or, simply, as tarbiyya - constituted the main
rite of passage that incorporated someone into the upper hierarchical circles of their
Sufi communities.

10
For a full account of the processes of religious codification of the Qadiri tradition in Aleppo and its
appropriation and reconfiguration by the current shaykh Badinjki, see Pinto 2009.
11
I use the word Bfollower^ to define those who recognize a Sufi shaykh as their religious guide or leader and
attend the public rituals in his zawiya, being members of his religious community; and I reserve the word
Bdisciple^ (murid; pl.muridun) to those who are in the process of being initiated by the shaykh into the Sufi
path.
12
Tarbiyya means education in Arabic, and the processes of acquisition of esoteric knowledge in the Sufi path
is also referred as tarbiyyat al-nafs (education of the self), tarbiyyat al-ruhiyya (spiritual education). However
in the Sufi contexts of pre-war Aleppo tarbiyya had meanings that went beyond those conveyed by the word
education, which made me choose the word initiation to translate it. Tarbiyya referred to the introduction of the
disciple to secret knowledge as well as unseen realities. Also, the discontinuous nature of the Sufi esoteric
knowledge made the disciple always a beginner in the unseen aspects of the divine reality, irrespective of his
advance into the Sufi path. Thus the word initiation conveys better the meanings of tarbiyya in the contexts
described here and will be used for translating it into English.
Cont Islam

Shaykh Badinjki emphasized the invisible and experiential nature of the haqiqa,
saying in a speech to his disciples that

BThe haqiqa lies within us, but is beyond our perception. It is the source of our
real life, of our spiritual life. It is hidden from us by a mirror, and all we can see is
our own reflection. Therefore, we have to search it within us and contemplate it
with our heart (qalbu-na)^

Shaykh Nadim elaborated a definition in similar terms, when he affirmed in a sermon

that

BPeople wonder how to know the haqiqa. This is useless. The haqiqa is every-
where, but nobody can see it. The more you know the less you see it. Thoughts and
explanations only push you further away from it. You know it only when you feel
it. The haqiqa is the unveiling (kashf) of God’s presence in our heart^.

Both shaykhs agreed that the haqiqa could not be accessed by ordinary sensorial
experience or intellectual effort. These cognitive tools could only apprehend the
exoteric (zahiri) aspect of things, missing their esoteric (batini) meanings. To them
the haqiqa constituted the very source of the realm of the unseen (‘alam al-ghayb),
which included the sacred mysteries of religion, death and the afterlife. The incompat-
ibility between the haqiqa and shared forms of knowledge did not derive just from the
fact that it was Bhidden^, but mainly by the fact that it was corrupted or even destroyed
when transposed into forms of communication connected to the material world, such as
language.
From this follows that, unlike earthly power, no amount of talking and speculation
can lead anyone to grasp the power of the haqiqa. The shaykhs’ very description of the
process of reaching the haqiqa only enhanced its mystery, for they insisted on its
invisibility and unknowability while pointing to its apprehension through processes of
visualization (seeing, contemplating, unveiling, and reflecting). While the transparency
of glass and its use in microscopes and telescopes to render visible unknown aspects of
reality generated a series of concrete metaphors that lie in the heart of European
modernity (Comaroff and Comaroff 2003: 291), the optics of the Sufi processes of
knowing the divine reality had a different instrument: the mirror. In this sense, the locus
of inquire was not the Bobjective^ world, but the individual himself, who would find
truth in a transformed subjectivity.
The members of these Sufi communities considered that the more knowledge about
the haqiqa was made transparent the less it was a valid pathway towards it and,
therefore, the less it contained truth. This was expressed by the fact that the knowledge
of a shaykh about the haqiqa, which is the source of both his wisdom (hikma) and
power, was referred to as his Bsecret^ (sirr). While this epistemology of secrecy shared
many features with other secretive systems,13 it had the specificity of being inscribed in

13
Fredrik Barth pointed that among the Baktaman of New Guinea Bthe value of information seemed to be
regarded as inversely proportional to how many share it^ (Barth 1975: 217), and that Binstead of developing a
‘theory’ of growth and health and fertility the Baktaman develop a ‘mystery’ of these themes. Secrecy is an
essential precondition of this mystery.^ (Barth 1975: 221).
 Cont Islam

a system which aimed to provide a method of access to the ultimate reality that was
open to all, but accessible only to the initiated in its mystery.
The esoteric knowledge of Sufism is transmitted not through cumulative acquisition
of information and meaning, but the gradual transformation of the disciple’s nafs (self)
and his/her forms of engaging and apprehending reality. Both shaykh Badinjki and
Nadim defined the nafs as the source of earthly impulses and desires, and both affirmed
that the role of Sufism was to redirect it away from the material world and towards the
haqiqa. In both zawiyas those who entered the Sufi path should pass through a
reorganization of their nafs (self), which was defined in terms of the acquisition of
adab (rules of behavior).
However, adab did not imply simple compliance with rules of civility or social
behavior, but had to express the inner qualities of the self. The acquisition of adab had
to be constantly proven and validated through various kinds of moral performance in
the public sphere, creating a framework of individual exemplarity. This was expressed
in the Sufi adage, Ball Sufism is morality (akhlaq), so those who advance in terms of
morality are also advancing in terms of Sufism^, a declaration was often heard in the
shaykhs’ discourses and frequently found in their books (‘Isa 1993 [1961]: 1). This
moral orientation made Sufi religiosity an important disciplinary mechanism in both
individual and social terms.

BOur heart is a mirror, love is a reflecting image^: Metaphors

and paradoxes in the Sufi initiation

The reshaping of the disciple’s nafs (self) happened in the process of initiation
(tarbiyya) into the Sufi path. The mode and the content of the initiation varied vastly
from one tariqa to other and, more importantly, from one shaykh to another. Never-
theless there were some similarities in the initiation process that was led by shaykh
Badinjki and the one performed by shaykh Nadim. The initiation into the Sufi path was
organized by both shaykhs as a process that moved from the intellectual accumulation
of exoteric (zahiri) knowledge, such as the study of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) or
commentaries on the Qur’an (tafsir), to the embodied experience of esoteric (batini)
truth through mystical states (ahwal; sing. hal) induced in ritual performances or
mystical practices.
One important feature of the initiation process under both shaykhs was the fact that it
was not organized into groups that would be subjected to specific teaching according to
their stage in the initiation path. While all disciples participated in collective activities,
such as the recitation of the wird,14 or listening to the shaykh’s sermons, their initiation
was specific to each individual. The acquisition of secret knowledge through experi-
ential states led to divergent configurations of the Sufi subjectivity among the disciples,
who gained moral autonomy in their social trajectories because of their participation,
albeit partial, in this secret knowledge.15 This process of individuation was reinforced

14
While wird means just Bprayer^, in this context it meant a prayer that aimed to induce mystical states in
those who recited it.
15
Georg Simmel pointed to the connection between the acquisition of secret knowledge and individuation
(Simmel 1950 [1908]: 334–338).
Cont Islam

by the fragmented organization of the disciples in the initiation process. Shaykh Nadim
summarized the situation, saying that Beach one has his own path^ (la kul wahid
tariqatu-hu).
The two shaykhs differed in the way they described this path. Shaykh Badinjki often
used analogies and metaphors. In one occasion he told his disciples that

BThe tariqa is like an ocean and the haqiqa its shore, which becomes more
distant the faster you go towards it. Once you think that you had a glimpse of the
haqiqa, it will fade away as illusion when you advance in the tariqa^.

After he spoke, the disciples were left with an intricate web of metaphors that
challenged efforts to create a deductive understanding of the categories that the Sufi
tradition used to describe and structure the mystical path or a clear image of the esoteric
truth that they aimed to reach.
Shaykh Nadim meanwhile tended to stress contradiction. He always insisted on the
primacy of the textual tradition in the Sufi path in his public speeches, when he talked
to his disciples he stressed the futility of intellectual effort to the advancement in the
Sufi path. Once I witnessed him counseling his disciples that

BReading and studying never made anyone closer to the haqiqa. Most masters
never read anything. Those who look for the ma’rifa (gnosis, illumination) in a
book are completely out of the tariqa.^

In another occasion he told them:

BTrying to understand the haqiqa is to become blind to it^

This apparent contradiction in shaykh Nadim’s teachings puzzled his disciples, as he

required large amounts of reading and studying from them. Shaykh Nadim
deconstructed deductive thinking among his disciples, continuously restoring and,
sometimes, strengthening the mystery of the haqiqa. Instead of producing new layers
of meaning through metaphor and allegory, as shaykh Badinjki, he used paradoxes and
puzzles that created intellectual disarray, collapsing certainties by fracturing logic.
Both shaykh Nadim and shaykh Badinjki dislocated the locus of knowledge from the
intellect to the body. In tandem with the readings in Sufism, their disciples were
required to perform a series of mystical practices, such as fasting, recitation of the
wird or of the names of God, and meditation in solitary retreat (khalwa). These mystical
exercises worked as disciplinary practices aiming to foster the acquisition and use of
body techniques, 16 such as breathing, body positioning and rhythmic movements,
inscribing the experiential framework sanctioned by the Sufi tradition as a constitutive
part of the religious self of the disciples.
While learning the concepts and categories of the Sufi tradition, the disciple had to
constantly scrutinize his feelings and emotions searching for signs of the mystical states

16
The concept of body techniques was coined by Marcel Mauss in order to reflect upon all forms of practical
knowledge that use the body as a tool in order to produce phenomena endowed with physical and social
effectiveness (Mauss 1995 [1934]: 370–272).
 Cont Islam

(ahwal) that characterized his advancement in the Sufi path. However, shaykh Badinjki
made clear that this kind of experiential learning could never be something objectified
as a coherent and clearly delimited theory, but would always remain a partial, idiosyn-
cratic and indirect unveiling of the haqiqa. He told his disciples after the recitation of
the wird that

BThe haqiqa is within us, but it is hidden by all our senses. Only the mystical
states (ahwal) that we experience in the path towards God can allow us to receive
some of its light (nur). Our heart is a mirror, and love is a reflecting image of the
haqiqa^

Shaykh Badinjki defined the process of initiation as a looking at mirrors where

various glimpses of the haqiqa are possible, making it an elusive presence that could
only be apprehended indirectly through a reflecting image that became fused with our
own. Therefore, the haqiqa might be lived as an optical experience, but it could never
be fully communicated as it will always take the shape and color of each reflecting
mirror.
Shaykh Nadim also insisted that the haqiqa could only be grasped through embodied
experiences, and not through intellectual speculation. Once he delivered a sermon to his
disciples on the importance of Bfighting against the nafs^ in order to avoid the sin of
Bkibr^ (pride) that led Iblis (the devil) to revolt against God. He concluded by saying
that one only begins to win this fight when he attains the state of dhikr al-qalb.17
However, sometimes the process of initiation produced experiences that were lived
by the disciples in conflictive ways, as they were completely dissonant from the
certainties created by other experiential realms in their lives. In the beginning of my
fieldwork, in 1999, tension was building between shaykh Nadim and one of his
disciples, an engineer in his early 30s. Until then he was considered to be the best
disciple of shaykh Nadim, who had him in great esteem. The man told me that he had
always followed the shaykh’s orders without any inkling of doubt until 1 day when:

BThe shaykh told me that my mother was performing magic (sihr). Therefore I
should not talk to her anymore. I could not believe what I was hearing. I loved my
shaykh, but I also loved my mother. Then, for the first time, I asked him how he
knew that. He did not answer me and he scolded me in front of all the other
disciples, saying that I was not worthy of being his disciple. I suffered greatly. I
felt anger, fear and guilt. But, in the end, I could not do what he ordered me to do.
After a long time of being scorned by the shaykh, I left him^.

The confrontation between two relations with a strong emotional component led to
the disciple’s failure to show complete trust and devotion to his shaykh and, finally, to
the rupture of their relations almost a year later. Shaykh Nadim’s attack on a relationship
based on strong ties of affection and trust, such as the one of the disciple and his

17
Dhikr al-qalb (remembrance of the heart) was considered to be the highest form of dhikr in the Sufi
traditions analyzed here. When it happens the evocation of God’s names and presence would be done by the
heartbeat instead of words, as it happens in the vocal dhikr, which is known as dhikr al-lisan (remembrance of
the tongue).
Cont Islam

mother, created an unsurpassable paradox that could only be solved with the disciple
giving up one of his loyalties that were in conflict, which in this case was the one with
the shaykh.
I witnessed and heard stories about other cases in which shaykh Nadim made similar
accusations against friends or relatives of his disciples that confronted them with a
similar emotional paradox. Ties of friendship and, sometimes, with distant relatives
tended to be dissolved by the disciple after a short crisis, while those with greater
affective intensity could lead to the rupture of the master/disciple relation. The logic of
these accusations is that the shaykh could Bunveil^ the truth in all social relations,
knowing the intentions and feelings that inhabited the heart of those who were
connected to his disciples. Sometimes even the self-image of the disciples was chal-
lenged by shaykh Nadim, who ordered one of them to live on the streets and beg for
food for a week.
These techniques of deconstruction of the social and psychological self of the
disciples through paradoxes that Bunveiled^ the truth of their existence produce, when
well-succeeded, the constitution of individuated religious subjectivities that had in the
shaykh their point of contact between the embodied dispositions that position the self in
its engagement with the world 18 and the normative principles of the Sufi tradition.
Therefore, while shaykh Nadim’s disciples had moral autonomy to make their own
decisions in the various spheres of their social lives, they had in him the ultimate
authority that could legitimize their actions as being in accordance to their engagement
with the haqiqa in face of the contradictions and uncertainties of everyday life.
An ethnographic example can show the dynamics of this kind of hierarchic indi-
viduation. In 2001, a disciple of shaykh Nadim, who owned a shop near the Old City of
Aleppo, decided to stop the practice of bargaining and haggling over the price of the
commodities he sold.19 When I asked him why he had decided to do so, he pointed to
the cultural paradox of Syrian society, which praises pious behavior and legitimizes a
practice that

BWhen you tell the client a price higher than the one that you would take you
harbor an evil intention in your heart, and you are inducing him to do the same,
for he will offer a price lower than the one that he would pay.^

When I mentioned that this decision could harm his business, he replied

BWhat good is to be rich if God is not in your heart?... Our master (murshid)
[pointing to shaykh Nadim’s picture hanging on the wall] is always protecting us
from temptations.^

He continued saying that shaykh Nadim told him and the other two disciples who
took the same decision that they had reached the state of sidq (sincerity/rightfulness/
loyalty). When I asked if more disciples had followed this path after that, he replied that
18
Thomas Csordas (1997:5) pointed that the self should be understood as Ban indeterminate capacity to
engage or become oriented in the world, characterized by effort and reflexivity^ in the mobilization of
embodied dispositions.
19
Two other disciples who owned shops nearby also had taken the same decision. After shaykh Nadim gave
his approval to their decision they started to meet and help each other.
 Cont Islam

no one else had, but Bonly the shaykh can judge [the others], for only he can see the
truth in our hearts^.
The metaphoric approach to and communication of the esoteric truth that was
fostered by shaykh Badinjki allowed a gradual and very uneven process of individu-
ation through the experiential transformation of the self, accommodating a larger gamut
of existential engagements with the haqiqa. This was clear in the case of Mahmud, a
23 years-old student of philosophy in the University of Aleppo who also worked as a
part-time real estate agent, and who became a disciple of shaykh Badinjki 2 years
before. Mahmud started to participate in the dhikr at shaykh Badinjki’s zawiya when he
was 19 years-old.
At that time he was having severe conflicts with his father, who did not approve of
Mahmud’s choice to study at university but wanted him to work in his shop. His lack of
money and his economic dependency on his father intensified Mahmud’s dilemma and,
according to him, he had no motivation in life. Following the advice of an uncle who
attended the rituals in the zawiya, he went to ask for shaykh Badinjki’s guidance. The
meeting proved to be a turning point in Mahmud’s life:

BBefore I said a word about my problems, the shaykh looked me in the eyes and
said: ‘Your troubles are not in you. Your father loves you, but evil is around you’.
Then he started describing people whom I knew: friends, acquaintances. And he
said that they were doing things against me. After a while he told me that I had to
become stronger, but this could only happen if I found God in myself. At that
moment I realized that I only could do it with him as my master (murshidi).^

According to Mahmud, he reshaped his entire social life, cutting his relations with
people whom the shaykh saw as harmful, and he began consulting him about new
friends or acquaintances. Mahmud found a job with one of the new friends who helped
him to show his father that he could manage his choices in life. He summarized this
process as follows:

BOf course I wanted to be a good son, but I also wanted to lead my life in a way
that my father could not understand. In the tarbiyya (education/initiaton) the
shaykh always shows how the path towards the haqiqa requires that you change
your perspective and way of seeing things all the time, you cannot take the easiest
path because you always will fall into error. In life it is the same, a situation looks
like without solution only because you look at it from the wrong angle. With the
advice from the shaykh I was able to find that the solutions were inside me.^

From his account of the process, it is clear that Mahmud considered that his initiation
in the Sufi path transformed him in a way that he could cope with the contradictions
and conflicts created by the discrepancy between his ideals of autonomy and the family
hierarchies in which he was immersed. However, the new-found autonomy in various
spheres of his life (family, work, study) was based on the moral legitimation provided
by the religious guidance of shaykh Badinjki, showing the articulation between moral
individuation and hierarchical relation to the master.
Sometimes, the connection to haqiqa through the mediating figure of the shaykh was
experienced as a protective power that allowed the disciple to cope with the
Cont Islam

authoritarian or arbitrary functioning of the Ba‘thist state. While the dealings with the
state rarely assumed a confrontational character, in some cases the empowerment given
by the haqiqa allowed the establishment of boundaries to the arbitrary behavior of state
agents. This can be seen in the case of Mustafa, a disciple of shaykh Badinjki, who
owned a shop in a neighborhood near the zawiya and was being harassed by a member
of the security forces (mukhabarat). The security officer was asking ever-increasing
monthly payments and favors from Mustafa in order not to implicate him in the
accusation against his cousin, who was arrested for smuggling activities.
After getting shaykh Badinjki’s advice, Mustafa said that he found certainty
and courage by repeating his personal wird, which was given to him by shaykh
Badinjki in the beginning of his initiation in the Sufi path, and decided to put
an end in this situation. He then told the security officer that he would not
attend his requests anymore. He continued saying that he had not done any-
thing wrong, so if the officer insisted in arresting him, he would be damaging
his soul and his reputation by committing an injustice. When telling this story
to me, Mustafa said that

BIn the end he just left me alone. My family was surprised, but I was sure that
nothing bad would happen to me as long as I remained faithful to my connection
to the haqiqa and did nothing that I would condemn in other people. I am
protected by shaykh Badinjki’s baraka, therefore I do not fear anything from this
world^

In a more accommodating encounter with the arbitrary character of the state

institutions, a disciple of shaykh Nadim was having a lot of difficulties in getting a
permit from the municipal authorities to reform a building of his property near the Old
City of Aleppo. Even after using some wasta (mediation by an influent person) the
demand for the permit was not issued. People gossiped that the difficulties were created
because someone important in the Ba‘th party would be interested in acquiring the
whole area where the building was located for building a hotel. One day, the disciple
talked to the shaykh about his problems, and the shaykh told him to do 1 day of khalwa
(spiritual retreat) dedicated to praying in the zawiya. The disciple obeyed and, slowly,
things started to move forward and, after some weeks, the permit was finally issued.
Then, the disciple told me that:

BI only got it [the permit] because of shaykh Nadim, his baraka is stronger than
wasta … No one, no matter how important, is stronger than the shaykh.^

From these examples we can see how the process of Sufi initiation in the two
zawiyas analyzed above produced moral agents that are empowered by their particular
connection to the universe of the divine reality of the haqiqa. This source of empow-
erment inaccessible to ordinary perception and opaque to the public discourse gave
autonomy to the moral agents in the public sphere, allowing them to cope with the
pressures and challenges posed to their trajectories by social hierarchies, cultural
expectations, and the arbitrary and authoritarian functioning of state power. The high
degree of individuation of the Sufi subjectivities, as their constitution often led to the
reconfiguration or, sometimes, breaking of social bonds, opened way to a multiplicity
 Cont Islam

of responses to these challenges, which ranged from cultural critique and creativity to
accommodation and mild confrontation of the state power.

Conclusion

In the context of the Sufi communities in pre-war Aleppo, secrecy was the context of
existence of the divine reality of the haqiqa. It can be understood as a form of
engagement with the world that generated an existential positioning of individuated
moral autonomy, which allowed the social agents to produce a multiplicity of moral and
practical frameworks to cope with the social hierarchies and authoritarian state power.
The idioms used to communicate knowledge in the mystical initiation were funda-
mental to the epistemology of secrecy of Sufism. They were responsible for the
constant creation of new layers of meaning and secrecy around the idea of the haqiqa
at the very act of Bunveiling^ it to each new generation of disciples. Thus, keeping the
Sufi tradition alive. They also shaped discrete configurations of the Sufi religious
subjectivities and take part in the constitution of the charismatic power of the shaykhs.
The heavily metaphoric approach of shaykh Badinjki produced a dense web of
meanings, which worked as a labyrinth of mirrors, where truth and reality could only be
grasped as images that were shaped, colored and distorted according to the position of
the observer. Thus, the haqiqa could be experienced as a presence that could be
observed as it transformed the observer. The paradoxes used by shaykh Nadim created
tension, fear and awe, for aspects of the haqiqa appeared as sudden revelations that
defied logic and dissolved social realities. In this context, the haqiqa is lived as a
dangerous presence that imposed itself and could either destroy or transform those who
got closer.
The power of the Sufi shaykhs was inscribed as the legitimizing ground of the Sufi-
framed religious subjectivities and, therefore, projected into the Syrian public sphere by
the very practices of moral autonomy that emanated from them. In this sense, we can
say that the Sufi practices of secrecy were a constitutive part of Syrian modernity, for
they created dynamics of individuation and moral autonomy, as well as multiple centers
of power in the Syrian society, which reconfigured and, sometimes, disrupted the
claims of absolute control that informed the politics of visibility of the Ba‘thist regime.

Acknowledgements I thank Nils Bubandt, Mikkel Rytter and Christian Suhr for their comments and
suggestions to this article. My thanks also go to the Sufi shaykhs and their disciples in Aleppo who allowed
me to be part of their path towards the unseen reality. Finally I thank CNPq and Faperj for the grants that made
this research possible.

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