ABSTRACT
During the twentieth century and into the present Naqshbandi masters have developed a variety of strategies to face the challenges of modernity and postmodernity. These have normally involved collaboration with one or another of the dominant forces of the age: the nation-state and its upper classes, Islamic modernism and fundamentalism, Western culture, and globalization. Masters of the Naqshbandiyya, the Mujaddidiyya, and especially the Khalidiyya are thus able to continue to voice their vision of Islam in the national and global public spheres. This, however, is done at the price of major modifications in their modes of operation and in their general commitment to the orthodoxy of the brotherhood. Such modifications may include turning the dhikr into a sober religious lesson or its abandonment altogether, propagating the message to Muslims as well as non-Muslims, and the substitution of the personal contact between master and disciple with the most advanced mass means of communication.
