Fading Legacies of Sufi Women’s Leadership: The Decline of Female Religious Authority within Sufi Brotherhoods in Morocco

Throughout history, religious governance was predominantly in the hands of male clergy; yet, women, despite prevalent restrictions, have held positions of authority. While the paradigms of religious authority and agency were commonplace among Sufi women in the past, as revealed by a congeries of Moroccan hagiographical accounts, women’s religious authority has dissipated with the institutionalization of Sufism and the organization of Sufi brotherhoods. Although Sufi thought and traditions often transcended the existing boundaries of Islamic orthodoxy towards the issue of who should embody religious authority, Sufi women engaged in Sufi scholarship and Islamic erudition, often incarnating a good command of religious knowledge. Therefore, this paper examines the changing mode of spirituality, where, in contemporary contexts, there has been a remarkable shift in women’s leadership and religious governance.

The general drift in Sufi women’s position, for example, has sparked a rupture in the continuum of sainthood (or walaya) that historically connected the past to the present. Importantly, the current paper problematizes this transformation, which signifies not merely an adjustment in leadership dynamics but raises critical questions about the implications for gendered variations within Islamic and Sufi contexts. The present study seeks to unveil the intersection of gender, religion, and authority, and to redefine the constituents, pervasiveness, and limitations of religious authority in light of ongoing sociocultural processes. This paper interacts with the issue of authority as it builds on stories and struggles of women’s diminished authority within Sufi orders, and undergirds the role of gender in the contemporary landscape of Sufism.