Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese Vol II. - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/27

 Islam, and still continues to exercise a great supremacy over men's minds, in spite of influences originating directly or indirectly from Arabia. There can be no doubt—numbers of written documents testify to it—that this mysticism was brought hither by the pioneers of Islam from Hindustan. The most important works on mysticism in vogue in the Archipelago were penned by Indian writers, or else are derived from a body of mystics which flourished in Medina in the 17$th$ century and which was strongly subject to Indian influence. To this body belonged Aḥmad Qushāshī, whose disciples became the teachers of the devout in Javanese and Malayan Countries.

Many of these Indian authors and also Qushāshī and his disciples, represent a mysticism which though regarded by cautious and sober doctors of the law as not exempt from danger, is still free from actual heresy. Behind this orthodox mysticism comes another, hardly distinguishable from the first on a superficial view, but which by its unequivocal pantheism and its contempt for sundry ritual and traditional elements of Islam, has incurred the hatred of all orthodox Mohammedans.

The heretical mysticism, of which there are numerous distinct shades, fell here, as in India, on fruitful soil, and nothing but the persecutions which orthodox theologians occasionally succeeded in inducing the princes to resort to, were able to thrust this pantheistic heresy back to narrow limits.

This latter sort of mysticism has this in common with the orthodox kind, that it finds in man’s community with his Maker the essence and object of religion, and regards ritual, law and doctrine merely as the means to that end. Many of the representatives of this mysticism almost at once forsook the orthodox track and embraced the belief