re: #864 Cato the Elder

I think that perhaps you and I might agree that Sufism is to Islam what Quakers are to Christianity.

Exactly.

As an aside: have you every delved into the “Orientalist” books of Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton?

Yes, he was great. I read his qasida as well as his translation of the “Thousand Nights and a Night”. I’m currently re-reading my way through the six vlumes of the Mardrus & Mathers translation of the same. They’re decidedly not the versions I heard as a child! LOL

FWIW, I cam to Islam through the Sufi door so to speak, so my whole understanding of Islam is colored by that approach. It’s one of the things that helps keep me calm when the nastiness starts flying—I just revert to khalwat dar anjuman (solitude in the crowd).