“The Sufi dance, zikr, danced in a circle accompanied by chanting and percussion to reach a trance state, also is still practiced.”

“He even started a Sufi cult under his name that became also a place for mystics from different faiths too.”

“Chapter 3, on pre-Christian Egyptian monasticism, along with a paragraph on Sufi mysticism, is too sketchy and vague to be of much help.”

“But the specific Sufism from which the whirling dervishes originated, which is Turkish, is as simple as this.”

“The central aim of Sufism, the self-extinction in the merger with God, is obviously borrowed from Buddhist and Vedantic sources.”

“Much of Sufism seems to be focused on trying to raise up that higher self, the ecstatic experience in which you are in union with God.”

“But recent writers on Sufiism have shown a disposition to seek its origin in Neoplatonism rather than in the east.”

“However the quotation has been very influential among some Muslims, particularly Sufis.”

“On Tuesday, January 11, 1938, he made his way to Basel and knocked at the door of the house where the group of Sufis met.”

“Sufis are typically more peaceful and less rigid than Salafis or Wahhabis, though there are militantly anti-Western Sufi leaders, as well.”