The Visible Life of an Order

Because dhikr jahri is performed aloud and often in public or semi public gatherings, it is usually the single practice by which an outside observer identifies a Sufi order at all, more so than its formal doctrine or its chain of transmission. Each tariqa develops its own particular dhikr, a specific combination of formula, rhythm, breathing and movement distinct from its neighbours, so that the Chishti Order, the Qadiriyya, the Tijaniyyah, the Muridiyya and the Rifai Order are each recognisable in practice by how their gathered dhikr sounds and looks rather than by a doctrinal statement a member could recite. This has made dhikr jahri both the orders' most visible export, the practice most likely to be filmed, described by travellers or adapted for a wider audience, and the target of periodic criticism from reformist and Salafi voices who regard audible, embodied dhikr as an innovation without precedent in the earliest generation of Islam. The disagreement is therefore not chiefly about remembering God, which no party disputes, but about whether the gathered, vocal form the orders practise is a legitimate development of that duty or a departure from it. The Chishti Order carried this visibility furthest, cultivating qawwali, sung devotional performance built around the same remembrance, into a distinct musical art form that reaches listeners with no connection to the order at all.