Abstract
While Sufi writings have largely depicted futuwwa as the selfless virtue of upright young men, there has been, throughout Islam’s intellectual history, an underlying current characterised by brave rebelliousness, a current tied to the virtue’s complex relationship with urban fraternal societies. This paper investigates Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī’s (d. 638/1240) deliberate response to futuwwa’s implications of recalcitrance. Making a case for a law-abiding variety of the virtue, Ibn ʿArabī builds a theoretical frame in which this manly trait, one of consideration and altruism, mimics divine attributes, especially a divine calculating wisdom. In doing so, Ibn ʿArabī performs a role that Jeff Mitchell describes as the prerogative of noble elites, historically speaking, namely, the social construction of virtue. As is argued here, while Ibn ʿArabī makes a careful case for a law-abiding futuwwa, the lingering resonances of the virtue’s gangster associations indicate that social influence is, to a degree, reciprocal. That is, while Ibn ʿArabī’s framing of futuwwa makes a detailed and metaphysically-substantiated case for law-abidingness, his argument also suggests, however implicitly, that the virtue cannot completely escape its non-elite outlaw framework.
A Daring Obedience: Ibn ʿArabī’s Futuwwa on the Right Side of the Law