`Uthman dan Fodio

He was a 18th century revolutionary scholar in West Africa... Basically, the way he taught others about madhabs and sufism helped me clear up some tangles in my mind:


"He also taught that all madhabs (schools of law), were correct so that people should respect them and the people within each school. He also tried to rectify the position of Islamic scholarship with sufism. Actually, he was also considered to be a leading part of the Qadarwi Sufi order. Yet, at the same time he made it clear that anybody who went into tasawaf should only go into it for knowledge of the heart. Any whirling around, musical playing, or extremism that was not [within] Shari'a he was against. His followers practiced a sober, individual type of Sufism that was more into heavy reflection. Anyone wishing to study sufism more in depth was told to know their fiqh first, so that they would recognize any sufi practices that crossed the Shari'a border."

http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Uthm_Fodio.html