“The Concept of Intuition in Sufism.” In The Handbook of Intuitions. Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science series, edited by Asad Ahmed et al. New York: Springer, 2026 – Muhammad U Faruque

Sufis grant that reason operates within a certain range of perceptions, but once it is called to move beyond its perceptive capacity, it becomes bewildered and perplexed. Then it tends to seek ways to prove the non-existence of those things it cannot normally perceive. Against such viewpoints, Sufis argue that there are incorporeal phenomena such as the laṭāʾif that are beyond the purview of the senses and reason, but one cannot deny their existence based on what one can perceive through the senses. In order to perceive such incorporeal phenomena, one needs to awaken the organ of one’s intuitive faculty known as the heart (qalb). Only then one is able to reach a superior state of consciousness which enables one to perceive the higher, spiritual realities of the self and the cosmos. Sufis use various terms such as kashf, shuhūd, and dhawq to refer to this particular mode of perception in which one has unmediated knowledge of things, which is often captured by their example of the “definition” of drunkenness as opposed to being drunk. This idea of unmediated or experiential cognition as opposed to conceptual knowledge is best described as the Sufi theory of “intuition,” which has a long pedigree in Sufi epistemology. The purpose of this study is to provide an overview of “intuition” in Sufism, before moving on to a more focused analysis of the concept in Shāh Walī Allāh (d. 1176/1762).