Massignon argued Sufism grew from the Qur’an against prevailing orthodoxy
Evidence
Here Massignon took a philological approach to selected Sufi texts, his aim being to demonstrate the Qur’anic origins of Sufism. In this he was running against the broad Orientalist orthodoxy of the time, which was to emphasize (and almost certainly overemphasize) unIslamic sources for Sufism, such as Christianity, Gnosticism, Buddhism and Hinduism. Massignon’s grounding in German philological techniques and his probing for deep meanings in lexical items was to pervade most of his future researches on Islam and the Arabs. His philology was wedded to mysticism, as he believed that God was immanent in the structure of the Arabic language. That language was ideal for describing the shattering effect of the transcendent Deity entering this world. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 402