Quora Answer: Do Sufis Believe in Karma or Reincarnation?

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ 

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Do Sufis believe in karma or reincarnation?” 

Sufism, or taswawwuf, is a field of the religious sciences.  One of the conditions of Sufism is orthodoxy.  No Sufi believes in reincarnation since that would contradict the Qur’an.  Islam is a religion of linear time, not cyclical time. 

The issue of karma is not so straightforward since it is not a doctrine that is well understood even by people who talk about it.  Essentially, Sufis believe that everything is by Divine Decree, and the purpose of spirituality is to negate the self and surrender to that Decree.  As such, there is no place for karma in Sufi doctrine.



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