ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the Egyptian Society for Spiritual and Cultural Research, which is not a Sufi order but is founded on the basis of the teachings of a Sufi spiritualist, Rafi Muhammad Rafi (Rafea Mohammed Rafea, 1903–1970). In words that reflect awareness of Sufism’s critics, the website clarifies, “When we speak of Sufism, we speak of the shaykhs who had awareness of this aspect, such as Ibn al-‘Arabi, Ibn ‘Ata’ Allah, and others; we do not speak of those who are Sufi only in appearance.” Drawing on ideas of European and American spiritualists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Egyptian spiritualists argued that spiritualism is empirically proven by its practitioners’ experiments and that it is compatible with teachings of Islam. The promotion of world peace has sometimes been featured at international Sufi conferences, such as “Sufi and Global Peace” conference held in Fez, Morocco in April 2017, and the World Sufi Forum, which was inaugurated in New Delhi.
