The four doors of Islam

Abstract

This paper - written after a visit in 1987 to the Turkish headquarters of the Jerrahiya, one of the Sufic brotherhoods of Islam - wishes to illustrate in a symbolic form one of the main aspects of this spiritual way representing a classical Sufic formulation of the path to God which is doctrinally and methodologically based on the integration of four levels of truth within the single unifying truth of the key formula La ilaha illa Ilah . In view of the subtlelty of the esoteric subject it deals with, the gnostic apprehension, which traditionally is recognised to be an activity outside the reach of the purely discursive mind, the author has preferred to avoid a strictly academic language and analysis, in an attempt to convey some of the richness and complexity of the spiritual meanings in a holistic, rather than analytical way