Where Sunni Devotion Crosses Its Own Line

The Ali silsila is one of the places where Sunni religious life visibly overlaps with themes usually associated with Shia Islam, without the overlap meaning what it might first appear to mean. Shia Islam holds Ali to be the Prophet's rightful successor as imam, a position bound up with a specific claim about legitimate political and religious authority after Muhammad's death, a claim Sunni Islam does not accept. The Sufi orders that trace their silsila through Ali are not making that claim at all; they honor him instead as the channel through which an inward, esoteric teaching passed, a role compatible with also holding, as orthodox Sunni theology does, that Abu Bakr was the Prophet's rightful caliph in the outward, political sense. The two claims sit in different registers, one about spiritual transmission and one about political succession, which is exactly why a firmly Sunni order can honor Ali's spiritual role without adopting any Shia position on the succession. The overlap has nonetheless made Sufi devotion to Ali a recurring point of suspicion for reformist and Salafi critics within Sunni Islam, who read reverence for Ali's esoteric role as an unwelcome importation of Shia sensibility into Sunni practice, whatever the doctrinal distinction Sufi tradition itself draws.