Sufi Mysticism and the Jesus Prayer

Paper Summary:

Through an analysis of a particular ritual of mystical prayer in both Christianity and Islam, this paper illustrates the shared similarities. It looks at how the Jesus prayer and the Dhikr prayer are effectively identically defined, are founded upon the same assumptions, share a comparable origin, have the same purpose, and share the same ritualistic feature of continual remembrance of God/Jesus.

From the Paper:

"The majority of world religions, including both the monotheistic and non monotheistic ones, are primarily characterized by belief in a higher being or force and attribute the powers of creation, life, death and the determination of individual and collective fate to that force. For the monotheists, this force is defined as God. Agreement, however, on the identity of the force, or the Creator, does not imply that these religions are identical and, in some ways, they dramatically differ. On the most superficial of levels, one may note that the three monotheistic religions disagree on the attributes of God and His relationship with man, further disagreeing on the identity of the true Word of God."

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