We need to begin by looking in broad outline at the teachings established by the Koran (the book received from God by Muhammad) and the Sunnah (the practices and sayings of Muhammad). As soon as we do so, we can see that, like any great religion, Islam addresses three primary domains of human concern. These can be called body, mind, and spirit; or doing, knowing, and being. The body is the realm of activity, ritual observance, and social relationships. The mind is the realm of perceiving, believing, knowing, and understanding. The spirit is the realm of the deepest awareness of self and of direct communion with ultimate reality, which is God, or true and real Being.
Because of the devotion to knowledge and understanding, Muslims came to study and assimilate the sacred lore that was set down by the Koran and the Prophet with more and more attention to analysis, explanation, and systematization. Some people were interested in learning everything that there is to know about the proper way of dealing with the body—that is, personal, social, and ritual activities.
... Other Muslims were much more concerned with how to understand the objects of faith, which the Koran designates as God, the angels, the scriptures, the prophets, the Last Day, and divine providence.
... Still other groups of Muslims focused their attention not primarily on activity or understanding, but on developing the love, generosity, nobility, justice, and sincerity that are commanded by the Koran and typified by Muhammad's relationship with God and with other people.
One might ask why most Muslim scholars became specialists in one of these domains rather than attempting to encompass all three. First of all, generally they did try to encompass all three domains, but actually doing so was beyond the capacity of most, though there are many exceptions. Scholars usually ended up being a lot more informed about one of these domains than the other two. Specialization, after all, is a general characteristic of all those who want to know something completely and thoroughly. Each of the three domains of Islamic knowledge—proper human activity, correct understanding of God and the world, and the actualization of virtue and goodness—can be unpacked and analyzed without end.
What I am saying is that from the very beginning of Islam, being a Muslim meant recognizing that the Koran and Muhammad provided the basic guidelines for bringing the body, the soul, and the spirit into conformity with the divine purpose in creating the world. However, people differed among themselves as to which guidelines were the most important and how they should put into practice. Some Muslims were naturally inclined to place their first priority in the body, others felt that they should focus their attention on the mind and expand their understanding of God and his creation, and still others held that the whole point of human existence was to harness the body and the mind in order to strengthen the spirit and to achieve communion with ultimate reality.
In short, Muslim scholars who focused their energies on understanding the normative guidelines for the body came to be known as jurists, and those who held that the most important task was to train the mind in achieving correct understanding came to be divided into three main schools of thought--theology, philosophy, and Sufism. This leaves us with the third domain of human existence, the spirit. Most Muslims who devoted their major efforts to developing the spiritual dimensions of the human person came to be known as Sufis. They taught that people must attune their intentions, their love, and their sincerity to the divine will. Those who came to be recognized as having achieved this goal became the Sufi teachers.
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