01/07/2026 18:30 - 19:30

HALL: Parenzo - A15

Contact: Petrone M.

Chair: Cancian A., Petrone M.

This panel reconsiders the place of Islamic esoteric movements in shaping political authority, social agency, and intellectual history from the 14th century to the present. While Sufism and other esoteric traditions have long been acknowledged as key forces in the formation of Muslim spirituality, their political and social roles remain underexplored or framed through outdated paradigms. The enduring assumption that mystical movements are socially static and politically quietist—an idea consolidated in colonial scholarship and revived in the wake of Iran's 1979 revolution—has obscured the complex ways in which mystical networks have negotiated power, legitimacy, and reform across Muslim societies.
We invite contributions that rethink these assumptions by examining how esoteric actors have shaped, contested, or reimagined political life. Submissions may address, for example:
• How did Sufi lodges, saintly lineages, or esoteric brotherhoods intervene in struggles over sovereignty, taxation, or territorial control?
• In what ways did mystical idioms of sainthood, baraka, or cosmology inform political legitimacy or statecraft?
• How did esoteric networks respond to, appropriate, or resist modernizing reforms, colonial governance, or nationalist projects?
• What forms of activism—social, intellectual, or revolutionary—emerged from mystical circles, and how were they theorized by their participants?
• How did esoteric ideas circulate across Sunni-Shi'i, Arab-Persian-Turkic, or Muslim-non-Muslim boundaries, and what political imaginaries did these exchanges enable?
• How have modern states sought to regulate, co-opt, or suppress esoteric movements, and how have these movements adapted to new regimes of surveillance and authority?
• What methodological approaches allow us to rethink the binary between "quietist" and "activist" Islam in light of esoteric traditions' historical complexity?