A Critical Approach to the Study of Religious and Sexual Abuse in Sufi Communities

---

Rose Deighton-Mohammed

---

Popular stories about Sufi teachers conjure the image of a mystically powerful figure whose actions, whether love-drenched or harsh, stem from their proximity to God. The possibility that the Sufi guide could be a flawed human being goes widely undiscussed. The stories of individuals who were harmed by their Sufi guides force us to reconsider how we talk about Sufism. This chapter examines the stories of two Sufis whose experiences with their Sufi guides demonstrate the risks associated with authoritarian approaches to Sufi pedagogy. Both figures came into knowledge of their Sufi guide’s sexual misconduct and were instructed to mistrust both their sense perceptions and conscience as reliable tools to make sense of the situation. Their narratives highlight how the training guide model (shaykh al-tarbiya) can usurp individual moral agency (khalīfah) and conscience (ḍamīr) from Sufi students, making it difficult for them to self-advocate in situations of abuse. Through an analysis of the writings of the fifteenth-century Sufi jurist Aḥmad Zarruq (d. 1493) and the digitally published blogs, podcast appearances, and speeches of the contemporary Yousuf Azhar, I argue that the preservation of individual moral agency and conscience are paramount to promoting safety within the Sufi student-teacher relationship