Post-Ottoman Idealisation and Transspatial Entanglements within German Sufism

This chapter discusses the way post-Ottoman Sufism is translated into a contemporary German context. The cases of two German converts to post-Ottoman Sufi traditions – the Naqshbandī-Ḥaqqānī ṭarīqa and the Mevlevī ṭarīqa – are analysed. The two interviewed Sufis’ socioreligious standings are informed by historical reframing and transspatial interconnectedness, in which they invoke an idealised past of the Ottoman Empire. Entangled with nostalgic notions of premodern Muslim societies, the two Sufis recreate their Heimat space to cope with German anti-Muslim resentments on the one side, and to demarcate themselves from other Muslims’ interpretations of Islam on the other.