Arab - Islamic Culture and Civilization Research Paper

Arab - Islamic Culture and Civilization - Research Paper Example The west side viewers have disguised the term Sufism, by denoting it as â€Å"Islamic esotericism† or â€Å"Islamic mysticism.† This kind of terminologies is imprecise and often provides a negative impression of the term. It also discourages people who consider the Sufism as something quite suitable in accordance with the predetermined criteria. 5 The literal meaning of the word Sufi is the â€Å"one who attires wool (in Arabic wool is termed as á ¹ £Ã… «f).† (Voll & Ohtsuka, 2014). This word was used for the Muslims on the basis of their attire, which was woolen, as they liked to wear the woolen dresses especially in the 18th century. With the passage of time, It became the signature style of a group, which was used to wear it to represent themselves as different from others on the basis of Quranic and Sunna traditions and practices. After this, it was the time of 19th century, when the people belonged to this group designated this practice as â€Å"Tasawwuf†, whose literal meanings were â€Å"being a Sufi† or it is also called as Sufism. It was their own designated word to make them differentiated from others. And nowadays it is famous as the Sufism (Ernst, 1997; Hourani, 1991). 5 Sufism is regarded as the mystical side of Islam due to a number of reasons. Generally, Sufis are such people who try to purify themselves, not externally but internally. They emphasized over the meditation in spite of the deeds, divine development rather than the legalism, the refinement of their soul or inner side instead of the societal relations (Voll & Ohtsuka, 2014). The Sufis have strong beliefs with regard to the compatibility of the Sufism with Quran and Sunna, as they argued that the Quran and Sunna has some undisclosed, obscure, connotation and representations. Rather than using the literal way of â€Å"interpretation of Quranic Verses and Hadiths, they employed the metaphorical way, which tries to find some