ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 explores the ways in which anti-Sufism contrasts with Sufi modes of theology, scriptural interpretation, pedagogy, and religious practice, breaking down these opposing “grammars” of religiosity as the underlying structure of this debate over Sufism within contemporary Islam. Following this, the chapter offers an account of how the grammar of anti-Sufi Islam was mobilized as part of a global movement to change the face of contemporary Muslim thought and practice in the later 20th century. In their most extreme manifestations, anti-Sufi sentiments have been expressed in the destruction of Sufi shrines by extremist movements, though Sufis have been active in responding to such critiques.
