Spirituality in Islam

Man is an intellectual being. Being endowed with a mind – his greatest faculty – which is what differentiates him from inanimate things, plants and animals; true spirituality has to be able to address his mind. So, spirituality has to be based on contemplation or reflection or pondering – tafakkur and tadabbur as mentioned in the Quran – which has all to do with intellectual activity. Any kinds of spirituality attained at a level lesser than that of our minds is a reduced form of spirituality.

The true Islamic concept of spiritualism is based on the concept of dualism or the duality of reality — that the Creator and the creature are completely separate from one another. God, according to this concept, has a real and eternal existence based on tawheed or monotheism.

Islamic spiritualism has come to have two schools of thought. One may be called the original Quranic school of thought (see the next section for details), and the other school of thought is commonly known as tasawwuf.

Maulana Wahiduddin Khan | Spirituality in Islam

Another school of spirituality that has gained popularity is that derived from Vedanta or Hindu philosophy, in which spirituality is generally taken as something that is opposed to worldliness. According to this school of spirituality, people usually assume that the farther they move from material and worldly things, the more spiritual they become.