kashf

kashf, (Arabic: “uncovering,” “revelation”), in Sufism (i.e., Islamic mysticism), the privileged inner knowledge that mystics acquire through personal experience and direct vision of God. The truths revealed through kashf cannot be transmitted to those who have not shared with them the same experience. The Sufis regard kashf as the alternative to ʿilm (“knowledge”), which applies systematic theology, logic, and speculative philosophy to the study of the nature of God. When the Muslim jurist and theologian al-Ghazālī (d. 1111) felt that philosophy and speculative theology had failed him, he turned wholeheartedly to Sufism, abandoning his teaching profession in the hope of finding the peace of mind that he did not find in his intellectual pursuits. After a period of mystical contemplation, he became certain that pure philosophical systems are contradictory and illusory and that the intellect should be used only to destroy trust in human logic. He concluded that kashf is the only means through which true and trustworthy knowledge can be attained and described it as “a light with which God floods the heart of the believer.”