Abstract

In recent decades new modalities of transmission of Islamic knowledge, in particular of its mystical trend, Sufism, have given birth to original religious movements from the traditional Islamic key concepts. The process of globalization, quickened in recent years by the great technological innovations in transport, communication, and information, has also brought about a transformation in the way Islamic knowledge is transmitted on a global scale. As already stated, the numerous economic, political, and cultural changes that have occurred in the last two centuries do not allow a clear distinction between the Islamic and the Western world anymore (Ernst 2004). For example, the “discovery” of Sufism by the West and the emergence in the Western mainstream culture of capital figures of classical Sufism, such as Muhyi al-Din Ibn ‘Arabi (1165–1240) and Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207–73), has been linked to the “rediscovery” of Sufism in Islamic countries since the second half of the twentieth century.