Guénonian Traditionalism at the Grand Mosque of Paris: a Profile of a Sufi Teacher

Abstract This article discusses the Sufi teachings of a religious authority who has taught at the Al-Ghazali Institute of the Grand Mosque of Paris. It first shows that this teacher’s vision of Sufism and of the Orient and Occident is based on the views of the French thinker René Guénon, but with a stronger Islamic accent, similar to Michel Valsan’s reception of Guénon. It then discusses which new implications this Guénonian-tinged Sufism contains, firstly, when it is performed for a migrant audience, and secondly, when it is taught at the highly symbolic site of the Grand Mosque of Paris. In this context, we also discuss parallels and differences between Guénon’s valorisation of the Orient on the one hand and colonial Orientalism as manifested at the Mosque of Paris since the 1920s on the other hand. Finally, we will present the teacher’s positions and way of thinking as representing a place where diverse currents of thought and political claims intersect and show that this challenges their potential classification as “integrated” or “non-integrated” within current political debates.