The Naqshbandi Order's Practice of Silent Remembrance

The Naqshbandi order, tracing its chain of transmission back through Baha ud Din Naqshband, the fourteenth century Central Asian teacher for whom it is named, to earlier links the order holds reach as far as Abu Bakr, the Prophet's companion and first caliph, is distinguished among Sufi orders chiefly by its insistence that dhikr, the remembrance of God through repeated invocation, is properly performed silently within the heart rather than voiced aloud, a practice called dhikr khafi. This sets the order apart from traditions such as the Qadiriyya and several branches of the Chishti order, which developed elaborate vocal and even musical forms of collective remembrance, chanted aloud and sometimes accompanied by movement or music, practices Naqshbandi teaching regards as valid within Islam generally but not as the order's own preferred method. Annemarie Schimmel's study of Islamic mysticism traces the order's preference for silent practice to an early conviction, attributed within Naqshbandi tradition to its formative teachers, that concealed devotion better guards the heart against ostentation than a public, audible display of piety, a rationale the order's own literature continues to state as the doctrinal basis for a practice that otherwise looks, to an outside observer, simply like quiet meditation.