“Oh Love like the temple of fire! Thou art him who has worn a body and its form, Thou art who stole the caravan of the Heart, give us thus a moment of rest. For it is in the burning of fire that my night gets through till the morning dawn. Thou art glory and fortune of mine! For the face of the sparkling sun I spin around His face, similar to the brilliant moon, and salute, without whispering a word.”
Rumi, Diwan Shams Tabrizi

The fact that Sufism provides a revolutionary vision of Islam has been clear since the 8th Century when Muslim mysticism, such as that embodied by Mansur al-Hallaj, declared that it was not important to travel to Mecca or fulfil all the liturgies necessary for being a good Muslim and discovering God, because God is present in the hearts of all believers. With the words ana’l haqq, “I am the truth”, the Sufi school of thought subverted current order and authority, thereby freeing Muslims from all mediating figures between the divine and the human, and above all provided the faithful with the possibility of becoming united with God and becoming one with Him.

Before the 1979 revolution, Iranians declaring themselves Sufi Muslims numbered around 100,000 people. Today, thirty years later, the number has risen to about 5 million. It is certainly significant that Sufism experienced a surge in popularity precisely during the government of the only Islamic Republic in the world and above all that is has increased in popularity among women and the young. The years that followed the Iranian revolution were characterised by rigidity in orthodox religious practices and their institutionalisation. It is sufficient to remember that on certain occasions it is compulsory to shout Allahu Akbar! (God is Great) from the rooftops, as is wearing the veil and maintaining separate spheres of interaction between the genders etc.

Immediately after the revolution, public areas were dominated by the colour black and rigidity in applying morality checks, above all for women. Black was the colour of the chadors worn by the guardians of the revolution; just as black was the colour of the flags wrapped around the bodies of the very young Iranian martyrs fighting in the war against Iraq. Music and singing were forbidden and products coming from the West were censored, thereby influencing the choices made by young Iranians. Religion, which had become one the governing tools, thereby became alien to the spiritual lives of people who searched for an alternative to the Ayatollah Khomeini’s political Islam.

Iran is now the country with the highest number of Sufi Muslims in the entire Middle East. Travelling through the villages, outside the large cities, it is possible to come across groups of Sufi women such as the Dervish, who, although this is still forbidden, dance and sing in the streets to the point that they fall into a sort of trance. Their veils are white and the fabric of their clothes is light. Dervish women often become reference points for the entire community, acquiring importance not only from a spiritual point of view, but becoming real local authorities, disregarding government laws that discriminate against them. In the large Iranian cities, Sufism is found in the living rooms of the urban middle classes. Gathered together to play traditional instruments such as the ney, the lute and the tar, men and women, but above all the young, dance and sing, reciting the poems by the poet Rumi and searching for direct contact with the divine. For the young, Sufism appears to be the means for remaining Muslim and simultaneously distancing themselves from political and state Islam. For some women being Sufi means rediscovering the authentic “Persian” culture that is, on one hand, free of the restrictions imposed by the governing orthodoxy, while on the other also free of Western cultural influences.

While for Sufis – as Hallaj too says – “religions are ramifications of the Single Principle”, Sufism’s reappearance in today’s Iran belongs perfectly to that school of thought involving a “representation of tradition” that has affected most of the modern world. It does in fact make use of tradition as a guarantor of authenticity, simultaneously proposing a totally new cultural model and one fully part of the world-system Iran belongs to. Unlike the accusation of extremisms and closure Iran has been accused of, following a broader accusation involving the entire Muslim world, the Sufi version of Islam in recent years seems instead to emphasise a message of openness, peace and brotherhood between religions that has its origins specifically within Islam . On the other hand, Sufism in the capital also seems to be a fashionable trend, and not without a degree of entertainment-like characteristics. In particular, this consists of musical and dance exhibitions that culminate in a state of trance than many, also non-believers, watch with pleasure and see as entertainment.

In Iran every prohibition has its exceptions. Hence, in a country in which 70% of the population consists of young people under the age of 25, forbidden music is in fact tolerated in the form of an “alternative” religious practice such as Sufism, which in a totally modern manner is a new way of being Iranian, and above all Muslim in Iran.