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Concerning Muhammad ʿAbduh
Someone wrote of Muhammad ʿAbduh:
He was regarded as a leading purist sunni as opposed to those sufis who used to control the lower uneducated class.
Purist? Muhammad ʿAbduh gave a fatwa which caused furor among the purist Sunnis, permitting the donning of fedoras and top hats by Muslims.
During my last visits to Egypt I got the impression that moslem brotherhood, jamaa islamiya and what the hostile West brands : "fundamentalists" all are anti-sufi and pro Mohammad Abdu.
Muhammad ʿAbduh in the very beginning of Tafsir al-Manar (1:18) calls the Sufi Shaykh Muhyi al-Din ibn
ʿArabi: "al-Shaykh al-Akbar" (the greatest Shaykh).
It seems the labels purist and anti-sufi seem just as slipshod as fundamentalist.
GF Haddad
see also:
•
What is Sufism?
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