It is often assumed that Sufism stands opposed to Wahhabism. Wrong. Sufism and Wahhabism, in fact, share a fatal characteristic – they are religions of the status quo. In Pakistan, Sufism legitimises barbarities of inequality and starvation – ‘do nothing, it’s god’s will’ – while at the same time justifying structures of oppressive power, Pirism and landlordism, rather like Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia. Contemporary Sufism, rather than being a solution to Pakistan’s problems, is the cause.
Latest Updates: sufism RSS
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johnpi
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johnpi
Al Shabaab launches offensive in Somali northern region of Puntland.
Having consolidated its power in the Deep South along the Kenyan border, Shabaab has launched a terror offensive in the northern self-declared state of Puntland. It is a Mexican drug gang-style campaign, with an aggressive string of targeted assassinations and low profile bombings in a Somali region that had been relatively safe and prosperous.
….In its quest to overrun Puntland, Shabaab will have to confront two strong groups. The first is Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama’a, a pro-government Somali Islamist militia that follows the religious tradition of Sufism. Shabaab has targeted Sufis for practicing a different strain of Islam, and has destroyed Sufi shrines, cemeteries, and other symbols. Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama’a is strong in the central regions of the country and has fought back against Shabaab’s incursion on its turf.
The second group standing in Shabaab’s way is the Puntland security forces.
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johnpi
Pakistani magazine article: The Saudi-isation of Pakistan.
Soldiers, policemen, factory and hospital workers, mourners at funerals and ordinary people praying in mosques have all been reduced to globs of flesh and fragments of bones. But, perhaps paradoxically, in spite of the fact that the dead bodies and shattered lives are almost all Muslim ones, few Pakistanis speak out against these atrocities. Nor do they approve of the army operation against the cruel perpetrators of these acts because they believe that they are Islamic warriors fighting for Islam and against American occupation. Political leaders like Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan have no words of solace for those who have suffered at the hands of Islamic extremists. Their tears are reserved exclusively for the victims of Predator drones, even if they are those who committed grave crimes against their own people. Terrorism, by definition, is an act only the Americans can commit.
….Villages have changed drastically; this transformation has been driven, in part, by Pakistani workers returning from Arab countries. Many village mosques are now giant madrassas that propagate hard-line Salafi and Deobandi beliefs through oversized loudspeakers. They are bitterly opposed to Barelvis, Shias and other sects, who they do not regard as Muslims. The Punjabis, who were far more liberal towards women than the Pukhtuns, are now beginning to take a line resembling that of the Taliban. Hanafi law has begun to prevail over tradition and civil law, as is evident from the recent decisions of the Lahore High Court.
….Pakistan’s self-inflicted suffering comes from an education system that, like Saudi Arabia’s system, provides an ideological foundation for violence and future jihadists. It demands that Islam be understood as a complete code of life, and creates in the mind of a school-going child a sense of siege and embattlement by stressing that Islam is under threat everywhere.
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johnpi
Somalia Sufi forces organize to fight the ‘existential threat’ of Shabaab Wahhabis.
Somalia’s main Sufi movement, Ahlu Sunna wal Jamaa, on Thursday wrapped up an unprecedented conference in Nairobi to strategize its response to the rise and radicalization of the Shabaab group.
Dozens of the usually quiet religious movement’s leaders have in recent days converged on Nairobi from Somalia and from Western exile to close ranks against what they see as an existential threat.
“The Shabaab are misguided people who have misunderstood the true values of Islam,” overall chairman Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Muhieddin told AFP before leaving Kenya Thursday.
Sufism is dominant in clannish Somalia, where Muslim saints are often also clan founders, but its leading clerics have voiced concern that hardline Islamist groups such as the Al Qaeda-inspired Shabaab were slowly eradicating it.
It emphasizes the mystical dimension of Islam and includes practices considered as idolatry by the followers of the Wahhabi sect adopted by the Shabaab.
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johnpi
Kadyrov, 33, was once a separatist but switched sides, recasting himself as an Islamic leader who is also loyal to Moscow.
At first, his injection of national pride along with lots of money from the central government in Moscow soothed war-weary Chechens.
And at first, the process of Islamization was voluntary. Any female student who wore a headscarf initially earned a prize of $1,000. Now all females, regardless of their religious convictions, must cover their heads in schools and government offices.
Kadyrov has banned the sale of European-style wedding dresses in the republic’s bridal salons. Polygamy is increasing. Members of the team around Kadyrov openly have several wives. Kadyrov has also supported honor killings.
Lipkhan Bazaeva, who runs a nongovernmental organization promoting women’s rights, says Chechnya is going back to the Middle Ages.
“Yes, we are a traditional, conservative society, with our own values, but the government has gone overboard, declaring unacceptable limits on women — that they should sit at home, they should obey their husbands,” she says. “As an individual, she has no rights even if her husband beats her, despite Russian laws to the contrary.”
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buzz
article by Rachel Aspden
This is a long piece in the Guardian UK. There are some encouraging aspects to the article and some that, to me, are not so good.
My journey to the heart of Islam
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buzz
Sufism vs. Terrorism in the Punjab. Losing the battle for Pakistan’s poor.
Good essay on the situation of poor Muslim communities…
In recent history, the gap created due to the non-performance of Sufi shrines and Barelvi Islam, or the exploitative nature of these institutions, has been filled partly by the deobandi and Ahl-e-Hadith madrassa conversion teams and groups, such as the Tableeghi Jamaat, and militant outfits. This alternative, unfortunately, is equally exploitative in nature. Sadly, today the shrines and Barelvi Islam have little to offer in terms of “marketing” to counter the package deal offered by the Salafists for the life hereafter, especially to a shaheed: 70 hoors (virgins), a queen hoor (virgin queen), a crown of jewels and forgiveness for 70 additional people. This promise means a lot for the poor youth who cannot hope for any change in a pre-capitalist socio-economic and political environment, where power is hard to re-negotiate. Furthermore, as stated by the former information minister Mohammad Ali Durrani, who had been a jihadi from 1984-90, a poor youth suddenly turning into a jihadi commander is a tremendous story of social mobility and recognition that he would never get in his existing socio-economic system. More importantly, the Deobandis and Ahl-e-Hadith offer a textual basis for their package, which is difficult for the pirs to refute due to the lack of an internal religious discourse in the Islamic world. The modern generation of pirs has not engaged in an internal discourse to counter this ideological onslaught by the Salafis. The main belief of Salafism is that all Muslims should practice Islam as it was during the time of Prophet Muhammad. The religion at that time, according to them, was perfect. Salafism – which pre-dates Wahhabism – is often used interchangeably with Wahhabism, which is actually an extension of Salafism.
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johnpi
Feature article on Sufi communities resisting al Shabaab in Somalia.
“Our Jihad is for the freedom of our religion and of Muslims’ property which Al-Shabab describes legal for them to loot,’’ Abu-Yusuf snappily said after taking a phone call from Mogadishu telling him that Al-Shabab executed two men for espionage.
“They kill anyone who does not want their crazy ideologies and fake justifications,’’ he adds.
….In contrast to Al-Shabab, there are no strict religious punishments in the group’s strongholds such as, whipping, executions and amputations, rather people are being peacefully preached to practice the religion well.
“The Sufis will forever be our religion’s clerics. They were the first ones to spread Islam in our country,’’ Somali educator Abdulle Nur told The Media Line by phone from Nairobi, Kenya.
The central region of Galgadud is the only place in which Sufism was threatened as Al-Shabab forbade the performances of spiritual ceremonies in the region while it was under their control.
But now the Sufis are in charge, and this time in Galgadud, Sufis are enforcing the law, patrolling the streets and implementing justice.
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thabet
The recent trend of articles in the media on Sufism as a counter to fanaticism has been dubbed “Jihadism versus McSufism” by Svend White (probably after Benjamin Barber’s Jihad vs. McWorld).
I like it.
Svend also links to several articles on the role of Sufism in geopolitics at the World War 4 website.
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buzz
July 24, 2009
Sufi Dervishes Detained In Iran
Some 20 Gonabadi dervishes were reportedly detained in the northeastern Iranian city of Gonabad on July 23, RFE/RL’s Radio Farda reports.
Sources close to the Gonabadi dervishes told RFE/RL that 200-300 dervishes were protesting in front of Gonabad’s judiciary building against the jailing of Hossein Zareyi — who is in charge of a dervish cemetery in Gonabad — when they were attacked by riot police and security forces.
The police reportedly used force and tear gas and some dervishes were injured in the clashes.
Zareyi was arrested earlier this week over the burial of a dervish at the cemetery.
Authorities had banned dervishes from being buried at the cemetery for what they claimed are ecological reasons.
But the dervishes say the ban is part of a government campaign against Sufis that has intensified in the past four years that President Mahmud Ahmadinejad has been in office.
The leaders of the Gonabadi dervish order have lived and been buried in Gonabad for more than a century.
Several conservative clerics in Iran have described Sufis as a cult and a “danger to Islam.”
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buzz
This week in Time…
Can Sufism Defuse Terrorism?
By Ishaan Tharoor Wednesday, Jul. 22, 2009In recent years, the dominant image of Islam in the minds of many Westerners has been one loaded with violence and shrouded with fear. The figures commanding global attention — be they al-Qaeda’s leadership or certain mullahs in Tehran — preach an apocalyptic creed to an uncompromising faithful. This may be the Islam of a radical fringe, but in an era of flag burnings and suicide bombings, it is the Islam of the moment.
And that is why some lament the decline of another, older Islam, an Islam of openness and tolerance and, most important, peace. For centuries, many of the world’s Muslims were, in one way or another, practitioners of Sufism, a spiritualism that centers on the mystical connection between the individual and the divine. Sufism’s ethos was egalitarian, charitable and friendly, often propagated by wandering seers and storytellers. It blended with local cultures and cemented Islam’s place from the deserts of North Africa to the bazaars of the Indian subcontinent.
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buzz
Atlantic Online in the “Daily Dish,” a reader joins the ranks of westerners who have re-explained the mystery of Sufism:
I’d like the mention that most Sufis, the most well known among them being the great poets like Rumi and Hafez, are and were pantheists. Sufis have their theological roots in Gnosticism, which is itself deeply pantheist, and not in the cop-out, pseudo-intellectual mode that you seem to think of pantheism in. I’d like to point out that one of the canonical gospels, one of the very gospels associated with “non-atheistic” thinking, is a Gnostic gospel with heavy pantheistic overtones: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1)” (Just read through John again. It’s full of this kind of winding, subtly subversive thought. Easy to see why Gnostics loved it.)
Any opinions? Is Sufism patheistic? Is Sufism atheistic?
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buzz
Not a good sign…
Friday, 17 July 2009
NCRI – On Wednesday, July 15, the Iranian regime hanged a follower of Sufism, after he spent five years at the central prison in Orumieh (northwestern Iran). Younes Aghayan, originally from the town of Miandoab, was arrested along with four other Sufi dervishes in 2003 when the regime’s suppressive forces raided the village of Ojtappeh. He was later sentenced to death by hanging for “waging war” against the clerical regime through his alleged involvement in an armed conflict with State Security Forces (SSF).On February 28, 2009, another Sufi dervish, Mehdi Ghasemzadeh, was executed by the clerical regime’s henchmen in relation to the same case.
By stepping up hangings in recent days, the clerical regime intends to instill fear and terror in Iran in a bid to fend off the growth of popular uprisings in cities around the country.
The Iranian Resistance condemns the hangings and calls on all relevant international authorities, especially human rights organizations, to investigate the deteriorating conditions of human rights in Iran, including the dreadful situation of religious minorities and in particular the suppression of dervishes.
God Bless
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Kawthar
Pakistan will counter extremism by “spreading Sufi thoughts“
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johnpi
AR Muhammad has talked to the daughter of “Big Bilal” Abdullah Rahman, one of four Muslims killed in the 1974 shootout at the Ya Sin Masjid in Brooklyn, NY.
Sr. Sayyidah grew up in the Darul Islam movement, which dissolved in 1983 with half the membership following Imam Jamil Alamin (H. Rap Brown) and half going to Jamaat ul-Fuqra. She lost two of her brothers to violent death, one went crazy and did an attempted killing spree, the other was gunned down by police.
The life and death of Sr. Sayyidah’s father had been kept from her until well into adulthood, and to this day she does not know where her father is buried. If anyone knows where “Big Bilal” Abdullah Rahman is buried, go to AR Muhammad’s blog and let him know so he can pass it on to the sister.
Umar Lee doesn’t think much of AR Muhammad and called him all kinds of names, (ally of Muslim haters, neo-con, Limbaugh wanna-be, etc.) Umar is the last person who should be calling anyone a “Limbaugh wanna-be.” Maybe the fact that Umar’s wife grew up in the Fuqra and Muhammad doesn’t have anything nice to say about it has something to do with it. Call it Umar’s “secret Sufi sympathies,” since Umar is the last akhi in the world who would make sectarian fitnah.
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johnpi
(via Juan Cole)
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razib, murtad fitri
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Kawthar
In Londonstani’s review of Ed Husain’s “The Islamist”, these two paragraphs caught my attention:
Framing the solution, as The Islamist implies, as a matter of “right Islam” versus “wrong Islam” is therefore misleading and inaccurate. If Islamism is being used as a bridge over a social gap, the solution is unlikely to be theological. The image of easy going weed-smoking free love (Islamic style) Sufis has always appealed to some in the West. After 9/11, it has gained new supporters who see it as a “form of Islam that we can live with”. Quite a few Muslims seem to have become drawn to Sufistic approaches to Islam precisely because it seems more West-friendly.
But politics is not the right reason to adopt or support an ascetic and esoteric religious path. It’s also misguided. Sufis can fight when they want to. The Bektashi order filled the Ottoman Army. Bektashi Janissary officers welcomed new recruits into their fraternity with wine, bread and cheese. While at the same time, they enthusiastically laid waste to large chunks of Europe. The Naqshbandi fought Russian expansion throughout Central Asia in the 19th century. And in Libya, Omar Mukhtar of the Sanussi order, fought Italian colonialism in the early 20th century.
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plimfix
“They read their books but they never understand the true message of love that the prophet preached. Men so blind as them cannot even see the shining sun.” A Sufi quoted by William Darymple writing about Pakistan in The Guardian. I try to discern between challenging Wahhabi anti-Sufism and Wahhabi bashing, since the latter somewhat undermines the former. Darymple quotes Ahmed Rashid extensively, whom I admire, but I’m surprised at his ‘Western interests’ perspective (Darymple even quotes Rand, although not unconditionally). The crumbling of Pakistan is a tragedy in its own terms, but then again, if the Taliban ever came to power in Pakistan, I’d be building a nuclear bunker in my back garden.
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Kawthar
Mokhtar Ghambou wrote a guest article at “On Faith” entitled “Sufism as youth culture in Morocco“
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Kawthar
From the article:
“It was Sufis who came and spread the religious message of love and harmony and beauty, there were no swords, it was very different from the sharp edged Islam of the Middle East.
“And you can’t separate it from our culture, it’s in our music, it’s in our folklore, it’s in our architecture. We are a Sufi country, and yet there’s a struggle in Pakistan right now for the soul of Islam.”
In the article, Wahabism was also described (by a Pakistani cabinet minister) as a “tribal form of Islam”.
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Tariq Nelson
Umar Lee discusses an article on the historical problem of homosexuality in some sufi cultures
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abunoor
The Economist profiles all the shirk and fasad that go on in the name of Sufism in South Asia. Of course, this is all portrayed as a positive alternative to the “Taliban Islam,” which I guess is any Islam that does not involve shirk and fasad.
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aziz
Irving relates a Sufi tale about Hajj, which strikes me as both profound and meaningless, like an Islamic koan. It raises the question, does the symbolic render the literal obsolete?
