About The Book

Sufi Epistemology Encounters Modernity in the Tariqa of Shaykh ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Sufi.

“Epistemology, rationalism, empiricism: the vocabulary which introduces this work would seem to presage a dry academic text and yet that could not be further from an accurate description of this truly remarkable book. By examining the teaching and work of Shaykh ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Sufi, in conjunction with the intellectual history of the last two millennia, the book weds together the traditional understanding of existence propounded by the ancient world with the most cutting edge perceptions of present day scientific discourse. By doing this it shows how the modernist thesis, that has dominated intellectual thinking for the past five hundred years, has provided a completely inadequate paradigm for a satisfactory understanding of the nature of knowledge. The sheer breadth of the subject matter is astonishing, bringing together, as it does, disciplines and subjects normally only examined in isolation, in a glorious fusion that sheds a new light on them and opens the way to a fresh and vibrant reassessment of epistemology and its expression within the world in which we live.” - Shaykh Abdalhaqq Bewley