Sufism as an Explanatory Paradigm: The Issue of the Motivations of Sufi Resistance Movements in Western and Russian Scholarship

sufism as an explanatory paradigm 139 © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2002 Die Welt des Islams 42, 2 Also available online – www.brill.nl SUFISM AS AN EXPLANATORY PARADIGM: THE ISSUE OF THE MOTIVATIONS OF SUFI RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS IN WESTERN AND RUSSIAN SCHOLARSHIP BY ALEXANDER KNYSH Michigan Over the past four decades Western experts on the Middle East and Islam have spilled much ink in accounting for the political role of those Islamic "revivalist," "resistance" and "opposition" movements of the 18 th and 19 th centuries that seemed to derive their vitality from "reformed" Sufi ideologies and institutions. 1 According to