/lit/ - Literature

>>12454642
>but strictly speaking, they really are heretics.
The 2004 Amman message contained a 3-point document which over 200 major Islamic scholars from 50 counties signed on to, it forbade declaring followers of Tasawwuf as apostates. Salafi Saudi clerics may not consider Sufis to be Muslims but that's not at all the mainstream position in the Islamic world. It's still quite popular in many countries, see pic related from Pew.

>>11841076
http://www.pewforum.org/2012/08/09/the-worlds-muslims-unity-and-diversity-1-religious-affiliation/

>I think that's a rather optimistic estimate, and also pretty vague.

Idk about optimistic, it seems roughly on track. Pakistan (17% sufi), Bangladesh (26% Sufi) and Egypt (9% and higher in other estimates) have a combined population of over 400 million people. Right there that's already around 50-60 million people active in Sufism, when you add in all the rest I would guess it's at least 80-100 million. It is true that many people are active in a superficial sense and not everyone active in it reaches a high level of mystical awareness but it's this teaching being common in the first place which allows for decent amounts of people to have the possibility of reaching it, it's better to have it be popular but only truly understood by a few instead of being almost non-existent and understood by nobody.