Just added another review for The Mystics of Islam, which I will most likely finish on the subway tomorrow:

Um, this book is just not detailed enough, and not in the right way either. Admittedly, its an “introduction” to sufism, but the author keeps making all these excuses about how he doesnt have space to go into things. its like, spare me your writing failures, buddy.

fortunately, sufism is extremely cool. its all about like this supreme all encompassing love for god, and how that this direct personal love of god frequently conflicts with the law of the koran, but that somehow they are still accepted as a vital part of islam as a whole, even though in a lot of ways, they are pretty much heretical to it all.

plus the sufis are cool because they wrote all these love poems disguised as praises to god, and praises to god disguised as love poems. Its a seamless union.

Hm, besides all that, I found out that the epic poem about Layla (after which Clapton named the song), seems to be a Sufi love poem. And this site here is saying that Layla and the figure of Lilith are from the same root word and archetype. And how Lilith and Kali stand for the same thing as well.

The good news is that Sufism has recovered and reintegrated the Dark Feminine side in the person of Layla, whose name comes from the same Semitic root as Lilith, meaning ‘night’. Layla is the name for God as a beloved Woman in Sufi poetry, and Her name shows the embrace of the positive side of the night as the Dark Mother, the love that overwhelms and heals the fear of the darkness. Kali means ‘black’ and Lilith/Layla refers to the blackness of night, the power of the ultimate Divine Feminine to dissolve all forms.