Entering Jerusalem: Deconstructing Assumptions on Identity as a Researcher and as a Sufi

Abstract

As a practicing Sufi studying Sufism in Israel I might be considered an ‘insider’. My research involved interviews and participant observation on Sufism in Israel as practiced by Jews and Muslims together. In many ways I am also an ‘outsider’. In this reflective paper I consider whether the terms ‘insider’ or ‘outsider’ aid a fuller understanding of the relationship of the researcher to her respondents? Or are these identity markers too inflexible? Surely integrity and rigour demand more than simple assumptions of where the researcher stands in relation to her subjects. I am using the statement, ‘Entering Jerusalem’ as a metaphor for entering a space where I discovered that my subjectivity was broader than I had imagined and where my interviewees taught me a wider understanding of self and identity than can be contained within the terms ‘insider’ or ‘outsider’. I will illustrate the alignment I found between academic method and theory, and my practice as a Sufi, based on a Sufi understanding of seeing the other as a mirror in which the self is reflected.