Majalah Al-Hikmah Edisi ke 16

It disregarded the Quranic thought of one God and put forth the metaphysical theory of the existence of God alone or pantheistic monism which is the immediate offspring of Advaita Vedanta displayed by Sankacharya of the eighth century. It might be said that the Inayatian Sufi movement presented Western and Vedantic ideas in Muslim dress, replacing ‘aqīdah, shariah, and tasawwuf preached by Islam. Hence, the Sufi thought took a new turn in the Western mystical concepts of the Inayatian Sufi Movement. On the other hand, Inayat stressed the unity of religious ideals with his universal and perennial mystical message as a response to the problems of civilization that he discovered in the West. And presented the concept of the divinity of the human soul which describes that each human being can arrive at self-realization or annihilation of the ego. Thereby he went beyond the Sufi tradition of the Chishti order and the Advaita Vedantic School in which he was educated and trained. In fulfilling his mission, he established an organization, the Sufi Order International, as a vehicle and framework for people searching an embodied spirituality that transcends the varieties of religious beliefs. It presents itself as universal and open to all regardless of national, religious or ethnic background. And it has more than 100 offshoots throughout the world and thousands of followers not only in the USA but also among Euro-Westerners, South and Southeast Asians, and others. In addition, Western Sufism presented by Inayat Khan is closely linked to the Theosophical Society, which was founded in New York in 1875 by Helen Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott. The central doctrine of Theosophy is the Philosophia Perennis that articulates the belief that all religions are expressions of a fundamental universal spiritual or Gnostic wisdom and universal brotherhood of humanity. MA JA L AH A L - H I KMAH 54