My individual project examines Sufi communities in the West as transnational networks (Böttcher 2006; Raudvere, C., Stenberg L. 2009), with particular attention to hybrid and perennials communities (Hermansen 1997) and Muslim converts, including so-called “awkward converts.” (Taylor 1999). It thereby adopts a broad transcultural perspective (Klinkhammer 2009). The project focuses on practitioners’ perspectives on practices, both leaders and ordinary members of Sufi communities. It addresses ‘traditional practices’ in the sense that they are embedded within Sufism and Islam as a discursive tradition (Asad 1986), as well as on ‘hybrid’ and ‘entangled’ ones. The project will explore the strategies employed for the rationalization and legitimization of these practices. It will further investigate the resilience of such practices in the face of the global resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism and the “re-Islamization” of Sufism in the West (Sedgwick 2019). Special attention will be given to the internal and external factors and discourses that inform appeals to tradition, as well as the processes of esoterization and exoterization of such practices (Piarino 2019).

By focusing on practices characterized as transformative (Buehler 2016), that is, practices primarily aimed at influencing human agents, and by analyzing how these practices negotiate the globally dominant scientific and technological discourse, the project will contribute to the development of a taxonomic framework for future investigations of such practices.

Finally, by engaging with the concepts of the “esoteric,” “spiritual,” “hybrid,” and “entangled,” the project will participate in current debates on the possibilities and limitations of non-essentialist comparative research in the study of esotericism.