"Sufism as 'Mysticism': A Global Religious History Approach" by Liana Saif

In this presentation, Liana Saif interrogates the now-automatic pairing of Sufism with the word "mysticism." Tracing this label back through Orientalist, Traditionalist, and Perennialist thinkers, she argues that "mysticism" obscures more historically grounded frameworks like al-bāṭiniyya, and reveals it instead as a modern, Western-inflected construct.