Reimagining Sufism: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Love And Spiritual Authority In Elif Shafak’s The Forty Rules Of Love

Abstract

This paper has explored how love and spiritual authority are discursively constructed in Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love using the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) model by Van Dijk. The novel brings together two parallel stories:[1] the thirteenth-century friendship between the Sufi master Rumi and his spiritual guide Shams of Tabriz and the present day story about Ella Rubinstein, a modern American housewife, who tries to redefine Sufism to the readers. A qualitative research design was utilized. Thematic, lexical and rhetorical analysis were conducted through CDA, which was studied metaphors, pronouns, intertextuality, and ideological strategies. The analysis shows that Shafak has made Sufism transformative and resistance-based spiritual journey and disruptive to the dogma of institutionalized religion and focused on experiential knowledge, interfaith harmony, and self-transformation. The dual narrative supports the timelessness and universality of the Sufi principles because it allows the text to work as a counter-hegemonic discourse to exclusivist theological narratives. The study adds to the body of literature relating to Islamic mysticism, and it shows that fiction can be one of the arenas of ideology argument and spiritual reinvention.