r/Sufism

I have a question regarding how traditional scholarship—historically and today—reconciles full-on Akbarianism with the boundaries of Ahl al-Sunnah.

If someone avoids making takfir of Ibn 'Arabi, do they officially consider him part of Ahl al-Sunnah? Did his prominent defenders, like Shaykh al-Islam Zakariyya al-Ansari and other traditional masters, view him as squarely within Ahl al-Sunnah?

Here is how I view the dilemma, and I’d love to hear how others untangle it:

• A Separate System: Full-on Akbarianism is its own comprehensive school of thought in both fiqh and 'aqeeda—in some aspects it aligns with Ahl al-Sunnah, but in others, it directly contradicts or is alternative to it.

• The Wahdat al-Wujud Nuance: I'd actually argue, perhaps surprisingly to many people, that Wahdat al-Wujud is his least hetrodox position.

What many people don't know—and I feel like many critics of Wahdat al-Wujud, including scholars, fail to realize—is that many earlier orthodox giants flirted with proto-Wahdat al-Wujud or Wahdat al-shuhud concepts; for example:

• Al-Ghazali in Mishkat al-Anwar, the section of Haqeeqat al-Haqai'q where he called God the Light of Lights and said: > "فكل ما عدا الله تعالى إذا اعتبرت ذاته من حيث ذاته فهو عدم محض، فإذا اعتبر وجوده من الوجه الذي يلي موجده كان له وجود، وإن اعتبر من الوجه الذي يلي ذاته لم يكن له وجود."

Translation: > "Everything other than God, when considered in itself, is sheer non-being; but when considered from the aspect by which it is related to its Originator, it has existence, whereas when considered from the aspect of its own essence, it has no existence."

• Hisham ibn 'Ammar, the muhhadith of the Sahihin said: > "سبحان من تجلى لخلقه بخلقه" Translation: > "Glory be to Him who manifested Himself to His creation through His creation!"

He was rebuked harshly by Imam Ahmad for this, but it remains a metaphysical reality for people who know.

The Breaking Point: The real tension, in my opinion, and according to my limited knowledge, arises when Wahdat al-Wujud is pushed to its absolute metaphysical "limit", anchored by boundless divine mercy and experiential kashf (mystical unveiling). This leads Akbarians to conclusions that, to my knowledge, fall outside Ahl al-Sunnah, such as:

> -Hell's punishment ('adhab) turning to sweetness ('udhuba).

> -​Pharaoh dying a Muslim.

> -​A radical reinterpretation of Noah's people: Rather than being viewed simply as stubborn polytheists who rejected the prophet and faced a standard physical flood, Ibn Arabi frames them as gnostics who outwardly disobeyed God but inwardly did not. Because souls, by their nature, are naturally drawn to the divine, so the Real praised them inwardly while condemning them outwardly. They could not refuse the divine pull within the idols they worshipped, because their god of belief was those idols. Since in Wahdat al-Wujud, everything reflects Absolute Being, these idols are delimited mirrors reflecting the Absolute, with the delimitation belonging solely to the mirror, never to the Source.

> ​Whether the Akbarians believe a literal flood literally happened or not, I am not sure, but they argue that the flood so thoroughly destroyed their outward created forms, or the delimited mirrors, and the illusion of separation that Noah's people were drowning in 'ishq (burning love) in the Sea of Unicity. And as Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi puts it, they were being tormented in God's Jalal (Majesty) in His Jamal (Beauty).

This effectively makes shirk stop being shirk, and turning what is traditionally understood as divine punishment into a hidden reward and a form of ultimate closeness to Allah.

Adding to the tension is that Ibn Arabi claims that the Prophet came to him and told him that he is the Seal of Muhammadan Sainthood, paired with teachings that traditional orthodoxy rejects as errors or kufr. This is further complicated by the fact that these very concepts, rooted in Fusus al-Hikam, were received through direct kashf via an encounter with the Prophet Muhammad, as he explicitly details in the book's introduction.

So my Core Question is how do traditional defenders justify full-on Akbarianism as an acceptable position within the fold of Ahl al-Sunnah despite these specific metaphysical conclusions? How is his status as the Shaykh al-Akbar reconciled with teachings that orthodoxy rejects? Did his teachings become an acceptable option within Ahl al-Sunnah?

Salaam everyone,

https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/fresh-details-emerge-in-operation-against-islamic-group-225624

I want to make a broader point in relation to a case that's been in the news this week, and I hope I don't upset anyone who follows this jamaah. My point is not specifically about this group, but about a broader pattern we sometimes see in Islamic institutions: they may begin quite innocently by collecting fees, subscriptions, and zakat, but over time can grow into enormous organizations and conglomerates, with leaders living in luxury mansions, driving expensive cars, and accumulating significant wealth. Meanwhile, followers can end up being treated less like members of a community and more like an endless source of funding.

The case in question is a useful illustration of exactly this pattern. A community starts as an Islamic dawah mission, raises money for a mosque, a Qur'an school, a dormitory and the project actually never quite finishes. Years and decades pass, and when someone asks where the money actually went, the answer isn't a set of books, it's a reminder to have adab, to trust the elders, to not question the "respected" ulama. The question itself gets treated as the failing, not the unanswered question.

This week's news brings the pattern into sharp relief. Ankara prosecutors detained dozens of people, including the group's leader, over an investigation into money laundering, fraud, and tax violations built on a financial crimes report flagging unusual transaction patterns across a wide network of companies since 2020, with over 100 billion lira moved through them. Separately, asset disclosures this week show the leadership's family holding a combined 191 properties, including luxury homes in some of Istanbul's priciest neighborhoods, plus roughly 100 billion lira in cash and foreign currency found in the raids. The prosecutors themselves have framed the investigation explicitly as a financial matter, not a theological one worth noticing, since the concern was never about anyone's aqidah, it was about where the money was going.

It raises a fair question for any of us in these communities, not just theirs: when a religious institution grows large enough to look like a giant business conglomerate, at what point does asking about its finances stop being disrespect and start being basic due diligence?

Whatever this organization has become, it is not Sufism. Tasawwuf was never meant to be a shell for unfinished construction projects and leadership and their family quietly accumulating property while followers are asked for more and more for decades. A real sheikh's tarbiyah doesn't require your silence about where your money goes. If something has felt off to you the endless appeals, the discomfort when you ask a plain question, adab being redefined to mean "don't ask" trust that instinct. Do istikhara. Ask Allah for clarity before committing more time, money, or loyalty to any group.

Real tasawwuf is measured by suluk and by the state of the heart, by how a teacher's company changes the people around him, not by how many buildings and companies carry his name or how large the organization behind him has grown. When the title survives but the substance gets replaced by boardrooms, shell companies, billions, and questions nobody's allowed to ask, what's left wearing the name "Sufism" isn't Sufism anymore. It's a business model that borrowed the label for cover.

p.s. Sorry about the typo in the title :)

Sahih Muslim 2703, Book 48, Hadith 55

We’re conducting a short survey for a university Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) research project exploring how people from different religious and spiritual traditions perceive and interact with AI in these contexts. We’re interested in both positive and negative experiences, as well as skepticism—whether you see AI as merely a tool, a conversation partner, a source of spiritual guidance, or something that should have no role in religious life at all.

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سلام الله عليكم جميعا.

Hello, fellow wayfarers! I am deeply besotted by Ibn Arabi and the Akbarian tradition. I believe I understand Wahdat al-Wujud as they intended it, and I do not believe it is shirk. As God’s Essence is never contained in creation; rather, creation discloses a delimited mode of His Absolute Being. The delimitation belongs only to the created form, not to Absolute Being itself.

But I am mainly struggling with two things: certain concepts in the Fusus, and the fact that so many eminent scholars condemned or even declared Ibn Arabi a kafir. It seems that even among his defenders, those who were not full-on Akbarians, like Al-Suyuti and Ibn Attah' Allah Skandari, often believed that his works had been interpolated, attributed problematic passages to shath (intoxicated utterances that are outwardly expressions of disbelief but may be excused because they were uttered by a pious person), or simply had not sat down and read the Fusus.

Even the Akbarians, despite their great influence in Ottoman elite circles, were swimming upstream against a longstanding scholarly current that regarded Ibn Arabi's core ideas as dangerous or heretical or kufr. Their prestige and state patronage did not amount to settled acceptance; his legacy remained deeply contested.

And correct me if I am wrong, but we do not really know of many defenders who actually sat down and worked through the Fusus and defended its arguments without themselves belonging to the Akbarian school. It seems that those who were able to actively defend the logic of the Fusus were precisely those who belonged to his school. And... They don't actually defend it, rather they just say the same things without telling you how they got there, etc. So it's not a defense.

There is a terrifying book called The Reality of Ibn Arabi: Followed by the Religious Verdicts of 200 Eminent Scholars Who Declared Muhiyudin Ibn Arabi to Be a Disbeliever or a Misguided Person, by Ali Hasan Khan. It defines Wahdat al-Wujud very wrongly, then has 9 sections, each dealing with a passage from Ibn Arabi's original Fusus, followed by an Akbarian commentary, usually from Jami, Qunawi or Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi, and then mainly Mulla Ali al-Qari refuting it completely. That part is not really my problem, because I can somewhat easily defend Ibn Arabi there and recognise where I think Mulla Ali al-Qari misunderstood him.

My main and much more serious problem is section 10, where it lists 200 eminent scholars who condemned Ibn Arabi, many of them even declaring him a kafir. Yes, I know that there were also scholars who defended Ibn Arabi, but if 200 scholars were genuinely against him, or even, say, 100, since some of the reports are not particularly strong, how am I supposed to reconcile that? I know some recanted like reportedly Al-Izz ibn Abdelsalam after sitting with Al-Shadhili and others, but still, nothing really changed in the grand scheme of things.

The book presents the material as though there were an enormous and sustained scholarly consensus against him. Here are 3 pictures showing how this section is structured.

Now, let's talk about my main problems with the Fusus

1. The Chapter of Noah

Does Ibn Arabi—or rather God via the Prophet Muhammad, since Ibn Arabi maintains that the Fusus al-Hikam was dictated to him by the Prophet with instructions to take it to the people so they might benefit—critique Noah’s mission in calling to God, saying that if Noah had successfully combined transcendence and immanence, his people would have listened to him? Furthermore, do Akbarians say those idol worshippers were actually gnostics who couldn't resist the Divine pull? And do they say the flood was a cosmic instrument that shattered their rigid outward forms, forced them out of their illusion of independency, and plunged them into the Ocean of Unicity? The part that trips me up is how this makes their punishment for disbelief (or incomplete beleif) a reward. For instance, Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi writes in his book Jawahir al-Nusus fi Hall Kalimat al-Fusus \[The Jewels of the Texts in Solving the Words of the Fusus\] that Noah's people were tormented by His Majesty (Jalal) within His Beauty (Jamal), because they say His Mercy encompasses everything as the Quranic verse says, and as the Hadith says, "My Mercy precedes My Wrath." He even mentions an idea of "praising in the cloak of blame" about how they were outwardly punished while inwardly, Reality was praising them; and also he mentions that their spirits were drawn to the Divine while only their phantoms (ashbah) disobeyed. Where did he get that from and what does he mean?

Yet, not all Akbarians read it this way. Ismail Haqqi Bursevi takes a starkly different view. Quoting Al-Qashani in his Ruh al-Bayan tafsir on Noah’s prayer in Surat Nuh (71:28)—"My Lord, forgive me and my parents and whoever enters my house a believer..."—he explains it as an inner map of the soul:

\> "Meaning, annihilate me in the spiritual unification (al-tawhid al-ruhi), and {And whoever enters my house as a believer} \[Nuh: 28\]—meaning my station in the Holy Presence through unification for the souls of those who believed and their egos, so that He brings them to the station of annihilation in unification, while {And do not increase the wrongdoers} \[Nuh: 28\]—meaning those who veiled themselves with the darkness of their egos from the world of light—i.e., annihilation by drowning in the primordial sea (al-bahr al-hayuli) and the severity of the veil."

How do we reconcile these two radically different Akbarian lenses? Which one is correct according to Akbarians, and according to Wahdat al-Wujud taken to its metaphysical limit? So ​I really would love to understand this, and I imagine this is the hardest and most controversial writing of Ibn Arabi, because these masters use specialized terminology and unspoken assumptions that are deeply implicit to their tradition.

2. Prophethood, Sainthood and The Seal

The other thing I just can't understand at all is where they got—and what they mean by—continuous prophethood versus legislative prophethood, which ended with Muhammad. How is it that sainthood is continuous while prophethood ended, but in the same time, another type of prophethood is continuous? Ibn Arabi says Saints take knowledge directly from the Divine Ocean while prophets require angels, how and why? I do understand that they maintain prophets are both saints and prophets—saints first and prophets second—but doesn't that degrade prophethood and make sainthood higher than prophethood? Furthermore, what do they mean, and how did they arrive at the ideas that prophets take knowledge from the Seal of the Saints, that the concept of the Seal of the Saints itself exists, and that Ibn Arabi himself is the Seal of the Saints and the metaphysical heir of all the prophets.

Ps: Tough I love (maybe wrongly idk) that Al-Azhar teaches him and defends him to this day.

Thank you 🌷

Edit: SUPERB NEWS! After doing some basic AI-assisted research, I’ve realised that, like, 70% of the 29 scholarly verdicts I checked are basically fake. What I’m finding is essentially a 14th-century Hanbali echo chamber, hearsay attributed to Shafi‘i figures but recorded more than a century later, “fatwas” from extremely minor and low-lev figures such as Nur al-Din al-Bakri al-Shafi‘i who his own master made fun of, Ibn Karhir made fun of, and the Mamluk Sultan exiled and prevented him from teaching ever again, and just good ol' category errors. It's looking good for Al-Shaykh al-Akbar!

Haqani and djinns

Salam, can you clarify this for me?

Thank you.

Does the Naqshbandi haqani invock the king of the djinns hazzaz?

The Role and Reality of Sayyidina Hazzaz

Sultan of the Jinn: According to Shaykh Nazim, the vast majority of jinn are now Muslim and obey a unified order led by their sovereign, Hazzaz. Keeper of Secrets: He is described as a powerful spiritual entity who holds and guards certain secrets related to the hidden aspects of the hearts of the children of Adam, under the authority of the saints and the keepers of the secrets of time.

Protection and Invocations: In certain spiritual practices transmitted by this branch of the tariqa, the mureeds (disciples) ask for his assistance by divine permission (Ya Sultan al-Jinn Sayyidina Hazzaz, adrikna) to protect themselves from occult harm, resolve difficulties, or repel negative energies.

Connection to Dhikr gatherings: Teachings report that the jinn under his authority sometimes invisibly attend dhikr gatherings and pray alongside believers in blessed places.

And here the sh kabani say

That they prayed in this place.in Spain

because of the presence of this king of the djinns hazzaz

https://youtu.be/xcd0NKfiXKY?si=RHDIz4Llhs94ytY3