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Islamic mysticism, Tasawwuf, has come to be known as "Sufism" in the west. We reproduce here an article from the "Dictionary of Islam" by T.P. Hughes, as additional material to supplement our ongoing critique and discussion of various aspects of this inner, contemplative discipline of Islam, which we maintain is based on no better authority than the Holy Qur'an and the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h.) and the practises of his noble Companions and their pious followers of subsequent generations.

In order to retain the original flavour of this old essay, we have tried not to tamper with its original style and language even though on quite a few occasions it was hard to control our desire to make appropriate changes or to paraphrase some of the material for the sake of clarity and brevity. Our purpose in reproducing this article by an eminent Christian missionary (India, 1888) is mainly to assist the non-Muslim, western, secular man on the street, in an unbiased understanding of Islamic teachings. We have used the grammatical (sic) to indicate, only at those undesirably prominent occasions, where it is obvious to us that we are not in agreement with the implications of the wording used by the author. - Editor