Coming to Islam through Ibn Arabi, hoping for some guidance
First off, I'm not sure this is the right place to ask, but I'm hoping for some answers and some good discussion.
For context: I'm an ethnic Swede who grew up in a secular household and society. Religion was never central to my life, but, I don't quite know how to put it, I've always felt God's presence and held a belief in God, even without any way to express it or organize my life around it. I grew up around Turks, Kurds, Syrians, Palestinians and others who were Muslim. We never really talked about Islam or religion, but knowing them at least kept me from falling for the propaganda about Muslims, having grown up during the peak War on Terror and Daesh years post 9/11.
Like most "spiritual" Westerners from a secular background, I went down the usual pipeline of Buddhism, non-dual Hindu metaphysics and so on. A lot of it resonated, but I found it tended to overcomplicate things and attract the kind of people who use their spirituality to serve their own ego, which I find off-putting. It also felt very culturally alien to me.
That was years ago now. But around that time I also discovered Rumi, whose poetry resonated more deeply than almost anything else I explored. Then, just over a year ago, I was introduced to Ibn Arabi, and something reawakened in me after lying dormant for years. Reading Ibn Arabi feels like reading my own mind, his words express everything about my experience, my thoughts, my relationship to God. For the first time it felt like someone was truly making sense of my inner world and putting it into something tangible.
Naturally this sent me down the rabbit hole of learning about Islam seriously, and the more I learn the more I fall in love with it. I see how the practices and rituals are designed to help you live righteously in submission to God and to struggle against the nafs. So much of it strikes me as deeply beautiful, and the sincerity of its believers moves me. I feel like I'm inching closer to converting every day. But I do have some questions, and I'd love your input:
- Mainstream Islam seems to reject Ibn Arabi as shirk. I can see why from a fundamentalist standpoint (a whole other debate), but it makes me cautious about how to approach the faith in practice. Is this mainly a Wahhabi/Salafi position, or do Muslims more broadly hold it?
- Coming in through this door, how would I be received by other Muslims? I'm planning to travel to Jordan and Turkey after the summer and would love to use the trip to explore the faith deeper, but I'm a little worried about how I'd be received if I explained my "entry point." Same question for visiting mosques among the Muslim diaspora in Europe.
- Most of the aspects of Islam that get called "problematic" seem to come from the hadith and later material rather than the Quran itself. I've read some passages from the Quran and loved it, and I plan to read "The Clear Quran" soon. Is that a fair read of the hadith? What exactly are Muslims expected to follow? Different denominations seem to build on different hadith collections, is a convert expected to do the same, or is building on the Quran alone enough to start?
- Also worth mentioning I moved out of Sweden over a decade ago and now live not far from a Naqshbandi-Haqqani tekke. My understanding is that they're closer to Ibn Arabi's Islam than a Salafi/Wahhabi reading, but are also quite controversial (?), so I plan to visit and see where it leads. Does anyone have experience with or insight into the Naqshbandis and how they're viewed relative to mainstream Islam? Any advice before I go?
Any books, texts or other sources you'd point me toward would be hugely appreciated, and any comments, discussion or advice on any of the above is also deeply appreciated. Many thanks, everyone.