Sufism

Before doing the reading for class Thursday, I had only heard about Sufism once before. In one of my high school religion classes, we briefly talked about Sufism but we did not go into much detail about it. Looking back, I think my teacher mentioned it was a thing and then continued on, but it was interesting to read more about it in No god but God by Reza Aslan. I will admit that I did not fully grasp what it was when reading so I Googled it and found this short video that I think did a decent job summarizing Sufism. This made me wonder about the presence of Sufism in Islam and how common it is in each of the different types of Islam. The Pew Research Center found that a quarter or more of those surveyed identify to be apart of a Sufi order. I had not realized that there were different orders of Sufi. Identification in a Sufi order is highest in sub-Saharan Africa. This is interesting to me because in my last blog post I found that the highest Muslim populations are in Northern Africa and the Middle East. I would have thought, based on that, that there would be a higher Sufi population in Northern Africa.