Secrecy in Islam, Sufism, and Shiʿism

Islam is in many ways a very open religion, but secrecy still played a role in early Islam and in Islam’s canonical texts. Secrecy is important for Sufis, who believe that the mystical experience should be kept secret, as should some forms of knowledge, and that some Sufis have access to the secrets of the unseen. These forms of secrecy have both protected Sufis from other Muslims who do not share their beliefs and bolstered the authority of Sufi leaders who are thought to know the secrets of the unseen. Sufi philosophers developed a conception of the divisions of the human soul that assigns a special role to a part of the soul that is known as “the secret.” Secrecy is most important for the Shiʿi minority within Islam, who developed the doctrine and practice of taqiyya (caution) to guard their secrets and protect themselves from the Sunni majority. While for the largest group of Shiʿa, the Twelvers, secrets are to be kept only from Sunni Muslims, and nowadays sometime not even from them, other groups, mostly descended from the Ismailis of the tenth century, also have internal secrets, revealed only to initiates. The same is true of a number of other minority groups, including the Druze, the ʿAlawis, the Alevis, and the Dönme. The practice of secrecy has contributed to the survival of all these groups.