Milad Milani is a historian of religion and political thought at the University of Western Sydney. He is Lecturer with the School of Humanities and Communication Arts and is Member of the Religion and Society Research Centre, UWS. Milad is working on the category of ‘cultural Muslims’ in Australia. He has ongoing projects on Sufism in Australia. He is interested in the juncture of religion and culture, religion and secularity and how this impacts on living traditions such as Islam in the West context and in reading Islamic history in modernity. He is the current Communications Officer of the Australian Association for the Study of Religion. Milad has a book titled: Sufism in the Secret History of Persia (Routledge: London 2013), and has a forthcoming manuscript with Routledge: Sufi Political Thought. Milad has strong interests in historical sociology, with an emphasis on the politics of religion, social injustice and conflict resolution.
In this interview, Milad Milani discusses the basic orientation and history of Sufi thought. He also speaks about the diverse national variations of Sufism, particularly with respect to Iranian (or “Persianate”) Sufism. The interview concludes with a few critical remarks on the questionable appropriation of Sufism in contemporary Western discourses on religion.
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