Religion Watch
Volume 37 No. 3
The issue of spiritual abuse by Muslim leaders is being tackled by ground initiatives and organizations, similarly to what has been taking place in other religious traditions, writes journalist and novelist Hanan Sulaiman in Ahram Online (January 6). Some Sufi spiritual leaders in particular are being targeted by groups confronting spiritual and sexual abuse in Muslim environments, according to Sulaiman. “Sufi sheikhs would be found taking advantage of their followers, especially women, exploiting them financially and/or physically to the extent of sexual relationships.” She writes that these sheikhs would play with abused disciples’ fears about their salvation in order to keep them under control.
Sulaiman lists a number of initiatives against spiritual abuse, noting that they are all based in the West, despite the existence of abuse in Muslim-majority countries. These include the Hurma Project, founded by Dr. Ingrid Mattson, Chair of Islamic Studies at Huron University College in London, Canada, and Facing Abuse in Community Environments (FACE), which was formed in 2017 and is based in Texas. This organization wants to create a framework by which to address the leadership accountability gap within the U.S. and Canada. “Culturally, Arab Muslims tend to deny wrong-doings related to the practice of faith,” Sulaiman writes. More activist work is thus being done behind closed doors than in public. Sulaiman notes that the lack of any such initiative in Egypt is what drove her to write a novel on the topic, The Shepherd (available only in Arabic).
(Websites of initiatives confronting spiritual abuse among Muslims, with each providing various resources: Hurma Project, https://hurmaproject.com; In Shaykh’s Clothing, https://inshaykhsclothing.com; FACE, https://www.facetogether.org)
https://www.religionwatch.com/spiritual-abuse-developing-as-issue-in-muslim-circles/
Showing posts with label Sufism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sufism. Show all posts
Feb 22, 2018
Iranian Security Forces Clash With Members of Mystical Islamic Sect
Five members of security forces are reported killed; sect members known as dervishes had staged sit-in outside police post
Asa Fitch in Dubai and Aresu Eqbali in Tehran
Wall Street Journal
February 20, 2018
Police in Tehran arrested hundreds of protesters after five security personnel were killed in confrontations with members of a mystical Islamic sect, the latest sign of social tensions in Iran following widespread demonstrations last month.
Scores of the sect members, who follow a Sufi branch of Islam and are known as dervishes, had staged a peaceful sit-in Monday in front of a Tehran police station to demand the release of one of their co-believers.
They clashed with riot police sent in to break up the protest after nightfall Monday, resulting in the death of the five security forces, a police spokesman said Tuesday, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.
“The riot was subdued by the security forces and the main instigators were arrested,” the police spokesman, Saeed Montazeromahdi, was quoted as saying. More than 300 people have been taken into custody, he said, including the drivers of a bus and car that rammed into security forces.
The dervish unrest marks another iteration of public discontent after a bout of nationwide demonstrations between late December and early January. Those protests, which included an uncharacteristically direct rejection of Iran’s ruling system, died out as the authorities cracked down. But Iranians have continued to demonstrate in other ways.
Dozens of women have been increasingly bold in their defiance of Iran’s requirement they wear Islamic headscarves in public in recent months. Video and images shared on social media have showed them waving their headscarves from the ends of sticks in busy streets, risking arrest.
Strikes and labor unrest have also continued unabated since the protests died down.
The latest clashes began after people gathered at a police station in northern Tehran to protest the recent arrest of a Gonabadi dervish man named Nematollah Riahi. It wasn’t clear why he was detained, but the dervishes have long been persecuted by the Iranian authorities, according to rights groups.
At least four were arrested during the bout of unrest in early January, but were released after several days, according to the Center for Human Rights in Iran.
While their religion isn’t outlawed, Sufis have long been marginalized by the Shiite establishment, which brands the dervishes a cult. There are no official statistics on the dervish population, and estimates by human-rights groups vary from about two to five million of a total Iranian population of about 82 million.
Video shared on social media showed protesters clashing with riot police, who used tear gas to disperse crowds. Numerous photos of dervishes, their faces and bodies bloodied and bruised apparently in the clashes, were also shared. None of the images could be independently verified.
Unverified video shared on social media also showed a white bus plowing into a crowd of riot police, an incident in which three died, according to Mr. Montazeromahdi. Two other security personnel, both members of the Basij, a volunteer force under the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, were also killed, the police spokesman said. One was run over by a car, and the other was stabbed, he said.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/iranian-security-forces-clash-with-members-of-mystical-islamic-sect-1519142084
Nov 28, 2017
The Dangerous Myths About Sufi Muslims
H.A. HELLYER
The Atlantic
November 27, 2017
The attack on Al Rawdah mosque in the Sinai last Friday, during which Islamists claimed at least 305 lives, was quite possibly the deadliest terrorist atrocity in modern Egyptian history and one of the largest terrorist attacks worldwide. Because the mosque was often frequented by Muslims linked to a Sufi order, the massacre also brought to light the deeply flawed ways Sufism is discussed—both by those who denigrate Sufism and by those who admire it.
Extremist groups like ISIS promote the idea that Sufism is a heterodox form of Islam, and then go further to declare Sufis legitimate targets. But it’s not just violent extremists who foster the heterodoxy misconception. In Saudi Arabia, for example, crown prince Mohammed bin Salman claimed on Sunday that “the greatest danger of extremist terrorism is in distorting the reputation of our tolerant religion”—yet intolerance with regard to Sufism is the bedrock of much of the purist Salafi approach that underpins the Saudi religious establishment.
That’s not to say that all those who self-describe as “Salafi” claim that Sufism ought to be met with violence. But many, if not most, deny its centrality within Sunni Islam. Certainly the vast majority of the Saudi religious establishment espouses that kind of belief, which is a massive challenge that the crown prince will have to tackle if he’s serious about his promise to spread “moderate” Islam.
The birth of the purist Salafi movement (which many pejoratively describe as “Wahhabism”) saw preachers inspired by the message of 18th-century figure Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab attacking Sufism writ large in an unprecedented way. While presenting themselves as the orthodox, these types of purist Salafis were actually engaging in a heterodox approach. Many of these figures had to ignore or rewrite large chunks of Islamic history in order to present Sufism and Sufis as beyond the pale.
Ahmad bin Taymiyya, a commonly quoted authority for Salafis, for example, was reportedly a member of the Sufi order of Abdal Qadir al-Jilani. The Sufi affiliations of many medieval authorities have been airbrushed from history in several modern editions of their texts published by Salafi printing houses. Yet, there were virtually no prominent Muslim figures who cast aside Sufism in Islamic history. When followers of ibn Abdul Wahhab attempted to do so by describing Sufis as outside the faith, they were themselves decried by the overwhelming majority of Sunni Islamic scholarship as indulging in a type of heterodoxy because of their intolerance and revisionism.
While some who portray Sufis as heterodox do so with malicious intent, many fans of Sufism in the West seem to agree that Sufis are heterodox—it’s just a type of heterodoxy that they prefer to the normative mainstream of Islamic thought, which they seem to think is different from Sufism. Ironically, the well-meaning nature of this misinformed perspective echoes the fallacy that extremists promote.
And it is an extraordinary fallacy. Until relatively recently, it would have been unthinkable for students in Muslim communities to consider Sufism anything other than an integral part of a holistic Islamic education. The essentials of theology, practice, and spirituality—that is, Sufism—were deemed basic, core elements of even elementary Islamic instruction. And religious figures known for their commitment to Sufism would not have been considered a minority; they would have been by far the norm. Indeed, the very label of an Egyptian “Sufi minority” being bandied about since the mosque attack is a peculiar one: Sufism isn’t a sect—it’s integral to mainstream Sunni Islam.
Sufism never betrayed Islamic orthodoxy; if anything, it is Islamic orthodoxy in its purest form.
The most famous Sufi in the West, as shown on Amazon bestseller lists, is Rumi, Afghan poet extraordinaire. Another renowned figure is Ibn Arabi, a Spaniard of the 12th century. But few in the West seem to realize that such figures, while indeed Sufis, were very much within the Islamic mainstream. Rumi, for example, was an author of fatwas and a specialist in an orthodox rite of Sunni Islamic law (the Hanafi school); Ibn Arabi was even more steeped in Sunni legal expertise, to the point where he was described by many medieval authorities as being capable of forming his own school of law.
That doesn’t mean that Sufis were never singled out for criticism in traditional Islamic scholarship—they were. Those criticisms were issued by Sufi scholars themselves, much as expert jurists criticized what they saw as shoddy attempts in jurisprudence, and specialized theologians critiqued amateurish forays into theology. One modern critic, a famed Sufi of the Comoros, said, “If we were better Sufis, everyone else wouldn’t think we are anything but good Muslims.”
Another myth is that Sufis are generally apolitical or eschew any martial activity. Historically, that certainly was not the case. Sufi figures like Abu-l-Hasan al-Shadhuli and Ibn Abdal Salam (the latter a famous jurist of his time) were at the forefront of campaigns to defend Egypt from the armies of King Louis of France. The Libyan struggle against the Italian fascist occupation was led by Sufis of the Sanusi order of Sufis, including the famed Omar al-Mukhtar. Shaykh Abdal Qadir al-Jaza’iri was a militant opponent of the French invasion of Algeria in the 19th century, while Imam Shamil of the Caucasus fought against the Russian incursion into his own land. But while they most certainly believed in that martial endeavour, and called it jihad, it was a jihad that meant that the likes of al-Jaza’iri fought to protect Christians; a jihad that meant that al-Mukhtar refused to mistreat prisoners of war; in other words, a jihad that was constrained by the mainstream understanding of Sunni Islam.
This activist trend among Sufis remains in existence today. In my own research over the years, I came across teachers of Sufi texts like Shaykh Seraj Hendricks of South Africa and Shaykh Emad Effat in Egypt. The former was detained for activism against apartheid, while the latter was killed in the midst of protests in late 2011. This is to say nothing of the scores of members of Sufi orders in Syria who participated in the Syrian revolutionary uprising against the Assad regime, as well as against ISIS. It is also true that some Sufi figures engaged in actively supporting autocrats and repressive governments—which other Sufis critiqued for what they saw as inconsistency. That critique has everything to do with what such Sufi figures see as orthodoxy and orthopraxy in the Islamic tradition.
It’s too easy to cast Sufis as a quasi-sectarian group that is somehow detached from Islam. Sufism never betrayed Islamic orthodoxy; if anything, it is Islamic orthodoxy in its purest form. Both those who denigrate Sufis, like ISIS and the Saudi religious establishment, and those who admire Sufis, like Rumi-loving Westerners, would do well to finally recognize this. Otherwise, we all risk betraying Islamic history.
H.A. HELLYER is a senior non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East and an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/11/airbrushing-sufi-muslims-out-of-modern-islam/546794/
November 27, 2017
The attack on Al Rawdah mosque in the Sinai last Friday, during which Islamists claimed at least 305 lives, was quite possibly the deadliest terrorist atrocity in modern Egyptian history and one of the largest terrorist attacks worldwide. Because the mosque was often frequented by Muslims linked to a Sufi order, the massacre also brought to light the deeply flawed ways Sufism is discussed—both by those who denigrate Sufism and by those who admire it.
Extremist groups like ISIS promote the idea that Sufism is a heterodox form of Islam, and then go further to declare Sufis legitimate targets. But it’s not just violent extremists who foster the heterodoxy misconception. In Saudi Arabia, for example, crown prince Mohammed bin Salman claimed on Sunday that “the greatest danger of extremist terrorism is in distorting the reputation of our tolerant religion”—yet intolerance with regard to Sufism is the bedrock of much of the purist Salafi approach that underpins the Saudi religious establishment.
That’s not to say that all those who self-describe as “Salafi” claim that Sufism ought to be met with violence. But many, if not most, deny its centrality within Sunni Islam. Certainly the vast majority of the Saudi religious establishment espouses that kind of belief, which is a massive challenge that the crown prince will have to tackle if he’s serious about his promise to spread “moderate” Islam.
The birth of the purist Salafi movement (which many pejoratively describe as “Wahhabism”) saw preachers inspired by the message of 18th-century figure Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab attacking Sufism writ large in an unprecedented way. While presenting themselves as the orthodox, these types of purist Salafis were actually engaging in a heterodox approach. Many of these figures had to ignore or rewrite large chunks of Islamic history in order to present Sufism and Sufis as beyond the pale.
Ahmad bin Taymiyya, a commonly quoted authority for Salafis, for example, was reportedly a member of the Sufi order of Abdal Qadir al-Jilani. The Sufi affiliations of many medieval authorities have been airbrushed from history in several modern editions of their texts published by Salafi printing houses. Yet, there were virtually no prominent Muslim figures who cast aside Sufism in Islamic history. When followers of ibn Abdul Wahhab attempted to do so by describing Sufis as outside the faith, they were themselves decried by the overwhelming majority of Sunni Islamic scholarship as indulging in a type of heterodoxy because of their intolerance and revisionism.
While some who portray Sufis as heterodox do so with malicious intent, many fans of Sufism in the West seem to agree that Sufis are heterodox—it’s just a type of heterodoxy that they prefer to the normative mainstream of Islamic thought, which they seem to think is different from Sufism. Ironically, the well-meaning nature of this misinformed perspective echoes the fallacy that extremists promote.
And it is an extraordinary fallacy. Until relatively recently, it would have been unthinkable for students in Muslim communities to consider Sufism anything other than an integral part of a holistic Islamic education. The essentials of theology, practice, and spirituality—that is, Sufism—were deemed basic, core elements of even elementary Islamic instruction. And religious figures known for their commitment to Sufism would not have been considered a minority; they would have been by far the norm. Indeed, the very label of an Egyptian “Sufi minority” being bandied about since the mosque attack is a peculiar one: Sufism isn’t a sect—it’s integral to mainstream Sunni Islam.
Sufism never betrayed Islamic orthodoxy; if anything, it is Islamic orthodoxy in its purest form.
The most famous Sufi in the West, as shown on Amazon bestseller lists, is Rumi, Afghan poet extraordinaire. Another renowned figure is Ibn Arabi, a Spaniard of the 12th century. But few in the West seem to realize that such figures, while indeed Sufis, were very much within the Islamic mainstream. Rumi, for example, was an author of fatwas and a specialist in an orthodox rite of Sunni Islamic law (the Hanafi school); Ibn Arabi was even more steeped in Sunni legal expertise, to the point where he was described by many medieval authorities as being capable of forming his own school of law.
That doesn’t mean that Sufis were never singled out for criticism in traditional Islamic scholarship—they were. Those criticisms were issued by Sufi scholars themselves, much as expert jurists criticized what they saw as shoddy attempts in jurisprudence, and specialized theologians critiqued amateurish forays into theology. One modern critic, a famed Sufi of the Comoros, said, “If we were better Sufis, everyone else wouldn’t think we are anything but good Muslims.”
Another myth is that Sufis are generally apolitical or eschew any martial activity. Historically, that certainly was not the case. Sufi figures like Abu-l-Hasan al-Shadhuli and Ibn Abdal Salam (the latter a famous jurist of his time) were at the forefront of campaigns to defend Egypt from the armies of King Louis of France. The Libyan struggle against the Italian fascist occupation was led by Sufis of the Sanusi order of Sufis, including the famed Omar al-Mukhtar. Shaykh Abdal Qadir al-Jaza’iri was a militant opponent of the French invasion of Algeria in the 19th century, while Imam Shamil of the Caucasus fought against the Russian incursion into his own land. But while they most certainly believed in that martial endeavour, and called it jihad, it was a jihad that meant that the likes of al-Jaza’iri fought to protect Christians; a jihad that meant that al-Mukhtar refused to mistreat prisoners of war; in other words, a jihad that was constrained by the mainstream understanding of Sunni Islam.
This activist trend among Sufis remains in existence today. In my own research over the years, I came across teachers of Sufi texts like Shaykh Seraj Hendricks of South Africa and Shaykh Emad Effat in Egypt. The former was detained for activism against apartheid, while the latter was killed in the midst of protests in late 2011. This is to say nothing of the scores of members of Sufi orders in Syria who participated in the Syrian revolutionary uprising against the Assad regime, as well as against ISIS. It is also true that some Sufi figures engaged in actively supporting autocrats and repressive governments—which other Sufis critiqued for what they saw as inconsistency. That critique has everything to do with what such Sufi figures see as orthodoxy and orthopraxy in the Islamic tradition.
It’s too easy to cast Sufis as a quasi-sectarian group that is somehow detached from Islam. Sufism never betrayed Islamic orthodoxy; if anything, it is Islamic orthodoxy in its purest form. Both those who denigrate Sufis, like ISIS and the Saudi religious establishment, and those who admire Sufis, like Rumi-loving Westerners, would do well to finally recognize this. Otherwise, we all risk betraying Islamic history.
H.A. HELLYER is a senior non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East and an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/11/airbrushing-sufi-muslims-out-of-modern-islam/546794/
Apr 2, 2017
20 Tortured and Murdered at Pakistan Muslim Sufi Shrine
MUSHTAQ YUSUFZAI, SAPHORA SMITH, REUTERS and ASSOCIATED PRESS
NBC News
April 2, 2017
LAHORE, Pakistan — Twenty people were tortured and then murdered with clubs and knives at a Pakistani Sufi shrine, police said Sunday, in what officials are calling a cult ritual.
Six women are among the dead and four other people were wounded during the attack on Sunday morning at the shrine on the edge of Sargodha, a remote town in the Punjab region, police said.
The killings were purportedly carried out by the shrine's custodian and several accomplices, senior police official Jamshed Ahmad told NBC News.
With its ancient hypnotic rituals, Sufism is a mystical form of Islam that has been practiced in Pakistan for centuries.
Ahmad said police raided the shrine and captured six people including the custodian, who has been identified as Abdul Waheed, 50.
He said police came to know about what he described as a "brutal killing" when one of the injured managed to reach a nearby hospital.
"The custodian called his faithful one by one to a room where he killed them using daggers and sticks," Ahmad said.
19 people died inside the shrine and one woman died later at hospital, Ahmad added.
Police said they were currently investigating the incident and trying to ascertain the perpetrators' motives.
Liaquat Ali Chatta, government administrator of the area, told the Associated Press the custodian was allegedly in the practice of "beating and torturing" devotees to "cleanse" them and said Waheed had confessed to the murders.
Rana Sanaullah, the law minister for the Punjab provincial government, said an initial investigation showed that Waheed had a collection of followers who would regularly visit the shrine and face torture in the name of religious cleansing.
The shrine was built about two years ago on the grave of local religious leader Ali Mohamamd Gujjar. Shamsher Joya, a local police officer, said Waheed would come to the shrine twice a week from Lahore, and his followers would submit to "beating and torturing with a red hot iron rod."
Pervaiz Haider, a doctor in a Sargodha hospital, said most of the dead were hit on the back of the neck."There are bruises and wounds inflicted by a club and dagger on the bodies of victims," he told Reuters.
Zulfiqar Hameed, Regional Police Officer for Sargodha, said that during his interrogation, Waheed had told police he believed his victims were out to kill him.
"Waheed told police that he killed the people because they had tried to kill him by poisoning him in the past, and again they were there to kill him," Hameed told Reuters.
Reuters could not immediately find contact details for Waheed or any lawyer representing him.
In recent months, Sufi shrines have been targeted by extremist Sunni militants who consider them heretics, including a suicide bombing by Islamic State that killed more than 80 worshipers at a shrine in Lal Shahbaz Qalandar shrine in southern Sindh province.
Last November, an explosion ripped through another Sufi shrine, the Shah Noorani in southwestern Pakistan, killing at least 52 people. Islamic State also claimed responsibility for that attack.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/20-tortured-murdered-pakistan-muslim-sufi-shrine-n741711
NBC News
April 2, 2017
LAHORE, Pakistan — Twenty people were tortured and then murdered with clubs and knives at a Pakistani Sufi shrine, police said Sunday, in what officials are calling a cult ritual.
Six women are among the dead and four other people were wounded during the attack on Sunday morning at the shrine on the edge of Sargodha, a remote town in the Punjab region, police said.
The killings were purportedly carried out by the shrine's custodian and several accomplices, senior police official Jamshed Ahmad told NBC News.
With its ancient hypnotic rituals, Sufism is a mystical form of Islam that has been practiced in Pakistan for centuries.
Ahmad said police raided the shrine and captured six people including the custodian, who has been identified as Abdul Waheed, 50.
He said police came to know about what he described as a "brutal killing" when one of the injured managed to reach a nearby hospital.
"The custodian called his faithful one by one to a room where he killed them using daggers and sticks," Ahmad said.
19 people died inside the shrine and one woman died later at hospital, Ahmad added.
Police said they were currently investigating the incident and trying to ascertain the perpetrators' motives.
Liaquat Ali Chatta, government administrator of the area, told the Associated Press the custodian was allegedly in the practice of "beating and torturing" devotees to "cleanse" them and said Waheed had confessed to the murders.
Rana Sanaullah, the law minister for the Punjab provincial government, said an initial investigation showed that Waheed had a collection of followers who would regularly visit the shrine and face torture in the name of religious cleansing.
The shrine was built about two years ago on the grave of local religious leader Ali Mohamamd Gujjar. Shamsher Joya, a local police officer, said Waheed would come to the shrine twice a week from Lahore, and his followers would submit to "beating and torturing with a red hot iron rod."
Pervaiz Haider, a doctor in a Sargodha hospital, said most of the dead were hit on the back of the neck."There are bruises and wounds inflicted by a club and dagger on the bodies of victims," he told Reuters.
Zulfiqar Hameed, Regional Police Officer for Sargodha, said that during his interrogation, Waheed had told police he believed his victims were out to kill him.
"Waheed told police that he killed the people because they had tried to kill him by poisoning him in the past, and again they were there to kill him," Hameed told Reuters.
Reuters could not immediately find contact details for Waheed or any lawyer representing him.
In recent months, Sufi shrines have been targeted by extremist Sunni militants who consider them heretics, including a suicide bombing by Islamic State that killed more than 80 worshipers at a shrine in Lal Shahbaz Qalandar shrine in southern Sindh province.
Last November, an explosion ripped through another Sufi shrine, the Shah Noorani in southwestern Pakistan, killing at least 52 people. Islamic State also claimed responsibility for that attack.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/20-tortured-murdered-pakistan-muslim-sufi-shrine-n741711
Feb 28, 2017
Who are the Sufis and why does ISIS see them as threatening?
THE CONVERSATION
February 26, 2017
Professor of Religion, Wesleyan University
Disclosure statement
Peter Gottschalk does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.
On Feb. 16, 2017, a bomb ripped through a crowd assembled at the tomb of a Sufi saint, Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, in southeastern Pakistan. Soon thereafter, the so-called Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.
In recent times, such attacks have targeted a variety of cherished sites and individuals in Pakistan. These have ranged from the 2010 bombing of the tomb of another Sufi saint, Data Ganj Bakhsh, to the murder of a popular Sufi singer, Amjad Sabri, in 2016.
As a scholar of Muslim and Hindu traditions, I've long appreciated the various and influential roles that Sufis and their tombs play in South Asian communities. From my perspective, the repercussions of such violence go far beyond the scores of bodies strewn around the damaged shrine and the devastated families in one geographical region.
Many Muslims and non-Muslims around the globe celebrate Sufi saints and gather together for worship in their shrines. Such practices, however, do not conform to the Islamic ideologies of intolerant revivalist groups such as the Islamic State.
Here's why they find them threatening.
Who are the Sufis?
The origins of the word "Sufi" come from an Arabic term for wool (suf). It references the unrefined wool clothes long worn by ancient west Asian ascetics and points to a common quality ascribed to Sufis – austerity.
Commonly Muslims viewed this austerity as stemming from a sincere religious devotion that compelled the Sufi into a close, personal relationship with God, modeled on aspects of the Prophet Muhammad's life. This often involved a more inward, contemplative focus than many other forms of Islamic practice.
In some instances, Sufis challenged contemporary norms in order to shock their Muslim neighbors into more religiously intentional lives. For example, an eighth-century female Sufi saint, known popularly as Rabia al-Adawiyya, is said to have walked through her hometown of Basra, in modern-day Iraq, with a lit torch in one hand and a bucket of water in another. When asked why, she replied that she hoped to burn down heaven and douse hell's fire so people would – without concern for reward or punishment – love God.
Others used poetry in order to express their devotion. For example, the famous 13th-century Persian poet and Sufi leader Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī relied upon themes of love and desire to communicate the yearning for a heartfelt relationship with God. Others, such as such as Data Ganj Bakhsh, an 11th-century Sufi, wrote dense philosophical tracts that used complicated theological arguments to explain Sufi concepts to Islamic scholars.
Sufi veneration
Many Sufis are trained in "tariqas" (brotherhoods) in which teachers carefully shape students.
Rumi, for example, founded the famous "Mevlevi" order best known as "whirling dervishes" for their signature performance.
This is a ritual in which practitioners deepen their relationship with God through a twirling dance intended to evoke a religious experience.
Some Sufis – men and, sometimes, women – came to gain such a reputation for their insight and miracles that they were seen to be guides and healers for the community. The miracles associated with them may have been performed in life or after death.
When some of these Sufis died, common folk came to view their tombs as places emanating "baraka," a term connoting "blessing," "power" and "presence." Some devotees considered the baraka as boosting their prayers, while others considered it a miraculous energy that could be absorbed from proximity with the shrine.
For the devotees, the tombs-turned-shrines are places where God gives special attention to prayers. However, some devotees go so far as to pray for the deceased Sufi's personal intercession.
A place of interfaith worship?
So, why do some groups like the so-called Islamic State violently oppose them?
I argue, there are two reasons: First, some Sufis – as illustrated by Rabia, the Sufi from Basra – deliberately flout the Islamic conventions of their peers, which causes many in their communities to condemn their unorthodox views and practices.
Second, many Muslims, not just militants, consider shrine devotion as superstitious and idolatrous. The popularity among Muslims and non-Muslims of tomb veneration alarms many conservative Muslims.
When a Sufi tomb grows in reputation for its miraculous powers, then an increasing number of people begin to frequent it to seek blessings. The tombs often become a gathering place for Hindus, Christians, Sikhs and people from other faiths.
Special songs of praise – "qawwali" – are sung at these shrines that express Islamic values using the imagery of love and devotion.
However, Islamist groups such as the Taliban reject shrine worship as well as dancing and singing as un-Islamic (hence their assassination of the world-famous qawwali singer Amjad Sabri). In their view, prayers to Sufis are idolatrous.
Success of Sufi traditions
Sufi traditions reflect a vastly underreported quality about Islamic traditions in general. While some revivalist Muslim movements such as the Wahhabis and other Salafis see only one way of observing Islam, there are others who embrace its diversity.
Many Muslims proudly defend Sufi customs such as shrine devotions because they are so integral to Muslim and non-Muslim communities, not only in South Asia but throughout the world. For many, these sites offer an Islamic expression of what it means to love God.
In fact, historically, in many regions of the world Sufis have been highly successful in adapting Islamic theologies and practices to local customs for non-Muslims. For this reason, Sufi traditions have been credited for the majority of conversions to Islam in South Asia.
It is only with the global expansion of Islamist revivalist groups in the last century that the urge to absolute conformity has become so strong. Even then, a majority of Muslims accept such divergent Islamic practices.
Given the popularity of Sufis, it's no wonder IS objects to such models of Islamic pluralism.
https://theconversation.com/who-are-the-sufis-and-why-does-isis-see-them-as-threatening-73431
Nov 29, 2016
CultNEWS101 Articles: 11/29/2016
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"Leah Remini has reportedly demanded the Church of Scientology pay her US$1.5 million after it lobbied a TV network to get her new show shut down.A lawyer acting for the Scientologists tried to get the show, which threatens to reveal details about the church, pulled before it airs on cable channel The Arts & Entertainment Network."
'You have to leave your doubts at the door to follow the story of Aaron Paul’s Eddie, a member of the green smoothie-drinking Meyerist sect who is suffering a crisis of faith.What is it? A mildly questionable but engrossing tale of religious cult members starring Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul."
"Fusion looks at the tensions between a pacifist religious sect and local North Dakota officials over an abandoned Cold War anti-missile complex that looks like something out of Illuminati conspiracies. The Hutterites won the auction for the giant pyramid on the prairie to the chagrin of local officials, who unsuccessfully tried to buy the decommissioned military facility."
"Following the development, ARY News anchor Iqrar-ul-Hassan, who leads the show which does such sting operations, invited religious scholars and learned Sufis to shed light on the issue of fake faith-healing."
"Calls to reform Quebec's Civil Code are mounting in response to the death of Éloïse Dupuis, a 26-year-old Jehovah's Witness woman, six days after she gave birth in October."
"Destiny Church will be under the Charities Services microscope after a complaint about its tax-free status."
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Sep 30, 2016
Sufi Sect of Islam Draws 'Spiritual Vagabonds' in New York
New York Times
On a leafy block of West 72nd Street, a Muslim Sufi order meets each Thursday evening, squeezing into Abdul Latif’s three-bedroom apartment. You don’t have to know Mr. Latif, born John Healy, to attend. Raised in the Yorkville neighborhood on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, he greeted his guests in Arabic with a thick New York accent, inviting them to sit on the floor.
A group of about 10 beloveds, as they call one another, then stood and locked hands, forming a circle. Mr. Latif, 57, weaved around the ring, leading the chants in unison, including the 99 sacred names of God and prayers of adoration.
The participants — mostly American-born converts to Islam — squeezed their eyes shut; some gently swayed, letting themselves be carried away by the rhythmic mantras. The pace of the chants quickened, one man stamped his feet, another wept silently, and after 30 minutes the beloveds were captivated and perspiring.
Sufis call this practice zikr and see it as a way of connecting with God and elevating themselves through communal meditation. Worshipers frequently lose themselves in a spinning frenzy, as with the well-known whirling dervishes.
Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam, has been cloaked in secrecy for most of its existence, having been forced underground by Ottoman rulers in the 13th century. Nowadays, however, many of these spiritual communities, like the beloveds in Mr. Latif’s apartment, are in plain view around the city if you know where to look. Some can even be found through a simple Google search.
The Murid order, for instance, meets in West Harlem and follows the teachings of its Senegalese founder, Ahmadu Bamba. The Tijaniyya group congregates on Fridays in a brownstone in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. The Naqshbandis meet on Saturday nights in a 19th-century church on Ninth Avenue in Manhattan.
Ahmad Khan Rahami, the New Jersey man whom the authorities blame for the Sept. 17 bombing in Manhattan, which prosecutors have said injured 31 people, is believed to have been inspired by radical Islam. American Muslims’ condemnations of the attack were immediate, but some were accompanied by concern that it could provoke anti-Muslim hysteria.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, a civil liberties organization, issued a statement that said, “Our nation is most secure when we remain united and reject the fear-mongering and guilt by association often utilized following such attacks.”
Annmarie Agosta, who grew up in an Italian-American family in Brooklyn and became a Sufi in 2009 after exploring Paganism, Wicca and Buddhism, seemed to agree with this statement. “I feel a deep responsibility to stand for the true message of Islam, which is peace, tolerance, and compassion,” Ms. Agosta said. “This is the message of Sufism.” As a lesbian advocate for gay rights and a member of a congregation in TriBeCa, she led a service to honor those killed in the Orlando, Fla., massacre this summer.
Many Americans anxious about domestic terrorism, however, are not interested in the nuances of various branches of Islam. And paradoxically, Sufis are often shunned by conservative Islam — the sect is dismissed as a diluted version of the faith, prioritizing the esoteric over the orthodox.
“Sufism has never been embraced by mainstream Islam,” said Daisy Khan, founder of the Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality and one-half of the couple who in 2010 sought to open a community center in Lower Manhattan, mislabeled the “ground zero mosque.”
For Ms. Khan, the ethereal buzz of Sufism is its great appeal, a faith that is “beyond the realm of this world,” dealing with the “supernatural, the magical and love.”
“Despite bad press,” she said, “people are still becoming Muslim and Sufi.”
It is an interesting time to choose to become a Sufi.
Before he became a beloved among Mr. Latif’s group on the Upper West Side, Bjorn Bolinder had come to New York from Minnesota with dreams of performing on Broadway. His father was a Baptist minister, and his childhood consisted of regular church services and Sunday school. “I didn’t feel connected to the divine there,” he said. “I had no experience of joy or aliveness.” He began seeking religion for himself in his mid-20s and came across Sufism through self-help spirituality books and a healing therapist.
Mr. Bolinder, now 39, described an early spiritual moment as a downpour of light so bright that he had to open his eyes to double-check that the room lighting had not changed. “I suddenly realized that maybe this is God, not whatever I learned in church,” he said. “I felt like a completely different person. It was just so beautiful.”
Over the next few years, between auditions for acting roles, Mr. Bolinder continued his spiritual exploration, fasting, learning prayers and attending conventions. Most of Mr. Latif’s Upper West Side group regularly attended a Sufi retreat in Pope Valley, Calif., where the beloveds would meet with their grand sheikh, Sidi Muhammad Al-Jamal, a Palestinian cleric who died in November at 80. This is where Mr. Bolinder and other members took their “Sufi promise,” a pledge of allegiance to their teacher and God in a formal ceremony, in return receiving their Sufi names. Mr. Bolinder’s is Abdullah.
Tall and blond, Mr. Bolinder doesn’t dress in a way that identifies him as a Sufi or a Muslim, although he occasionally thumbs his prayer beads on the subway. But having a Sufi name makes him part of a spiritual community. Five years after his “coming out as a Sufi,” he said, his parents are supportive, and his father has even taken a Sufi course on Jesus, who appears as a prophet in the Quran.
“I feel sad for Muslims who don’t acknowledge Sufism as part of the breadth of the divine,” Mr. Bolinder said. “We are all one. They’re missing out.”
Sufism cuts across all sects of the faith. “You can be a Shia or a Sunni or any type of Muslim and still be a Sufi,” said James W. Morris, professor of Islamic thought and history at Boston College.
Often caricatured as kumbaya hippies, Sufis seek divine love and connection, but their practices encompass strict worldly rules and commitments: long services, dawn and night prayers, rigorous meditation and frequent fasting — in addition to the common Islamic practices of five daily prayers, the hajj pilgrimage and abstention from alcohol.
Sufis cluster into tarikas, or spiritual orders, that are headed by a grand sheikh who may live in Cairo, but are led day to day by a local sheikh who could live in Queens.
While few reliable estimates exist of the number of Sufis in America, Islam over all is rapidly growing. The Pew Research Center estimates that by 2050, Muslims will become the second-largest religious group in the United States, after Christians, totaling over eight million people.
Discussing that growth, Khalid Latif, chaplain of the Islamic Center at New York University, said that in the city, “there’s an absence of spirituality and stillness,” and that even in times of heightened anxiety in the West about Muslims, the center saw a steady stream of the curious. He said that for many Americans, Sufism was an appealing first step.
Tourists and shoppers in TriBeCa could easily miss the discreet blue plaque on a three-story building on West Broadway between a tavern and a brasserie. It reads, “Dergah Nur Ashki Jerrahi Sufi Order.” Inside is where New Yorkers are most likely to encounter whirling dervishes.
Visitors, once they have removed their shoes, enter a prayer hall with a high ceiling and ornate green and gold Arabic calligraphy spelling out the Prophet Muhammad’s name decorating the walls. Books and prayer rugs are strewed about, and a table is laden with sweet Turkish tea and dates. A woman’s voice drifts across the hall, performing the public call to prayer — a role traditionally reserved for men.
What makes the order most unusual is that its local sheikh is a woman: the former Philippa de Menil, 69, part of Texas oil aristocracy. She became a Sufi in the 1970s, and, now known as Sheikha Fariha al-Jerrahi, has led the Nur Jerrahi order since its founder’s death in 1995.
Wearing a flowing white gown, her hair half-wrapped in a blue turban, Sheikha Fariha completes the call to prayer and summons the group’s members to stand side by side, avoiding the more orthodox Islamic practice of positioning men up front.
Sheikha Fariha gives few interviews, and she declined to speak to a reporter, but her longtime secretary, Abdul Rahim, answered questions about the congregation. A female sheikh shouldn’t be viewed as unusual, said Mr. Rahim, who was born Thomas Rippe and grew up in Brooklyn. “We don’t put an emphasis on women; we emphasize equality,” he said. “We think of it as a certain kind of maturity.”
The order has no dress code and no rules on sexual orientation. Indeed, the order is so liberal that some members don’t even label themselves as Muslims.
This kind of unorthodox approach, said Marcia Hermansen, director of the Islamic world studies program at Loyola University Chicago, is both the root of Sufism’s appeal and its weakness. Charismatic leaders like Sheikha Fariha have spurred Sufism’s growth in America, she said, with New York in particular attracting “loosey-goosey liberal Sufism.”
And yet for all its liberal trappings, Sufism cannot be detached from Islam. “Sufism isn’t just a label you wear; it’s a state of being,” said John Andrew Morrow, an Islam scholar and author. “You can’t pick and choose parts of Islam, and you can’t mislead sincere people, drawing them into Sufism without telling them this is fundamentally linked to Islam.”
Part of this problem, he said, is the American tradition of “spiritual vagabonds.”
“They bounce around from one spiritual tradition to another,” he said, “like going to a buffet.”
Like the Shadhili group on the Upper West Side, Jerrahi members participate in long zikr services; theirs last until the wee hours. During a recent session, members formed a sitting circle, perched on low wooden stools and placed their hands on their hearts, swaying as they sang a communal tune. One man lightly tapped out a beat on a Persian drum; another young woman passed around a hymnbook, in English, so that newcomers could sing along.
A few late worshipers trickled in and joined the circle, hastily removing their shoes and respectfully bowing in the direction of Sheikha Fariha, who had the bearing of a slightly bossy school principal. During the service, one man discreetly made to leave the room. Her eyes tightly closed, legs crossed and back straight, Sheikha Fariha snapped, “Where are you going?” The man jumped at being noticed and sheepishly replied, “To the restroom.” She dismissed him with a wave of her hand without ever opening her eyes.
Sitting on the floor of the main prayer hall was Juliet Rabia Gentile, 36, who has belonged to this order for more than a decade. “I was always interested in Sufi culture: music, dance, art and the works of the Persian poets Rumi and Hafez,” Ms. Gentile said. “It was definitely more of a cultural rather than spiritual interest at first.”
Her upbringing in New York City was Christian. “Initially, my family thought I was experimenting and it would probably go away after a couple of years,” she said. “Certain friends were surprised I’d become a Muslim, especially post-9/11.”
The group’s female leadership was a lure for Ms. Gentile, who is proud that American Sufism has cultivated an atmosphere of acceptance. “Our sheikha is an unusual product of American religious freedoms,” she said.
But she is also aware that Sufis are in a difficult position, both within Islam and within American culture. “Sufis nowadays are under attack and called heretics,” she said. “It’s ironic given all the Islamophobia, there’s been a surge of growth of interest. People just want to understand.”
Ms. Gentile doesn’t wear the headscarf outside the Dergah. “I can sense that the vibe here is changing,” she said. “Americans have reached heightened paranoia in the two years since ISIS emerged. People are becoming irrational.”
She said her fellow New Yorkers were less likely to be swayed by panic. But she is nonetheless wary. “Fear is a strong drug,” she said.
A version of this article appears in print on September 25, 2016, on page MB1 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘Spiritual Vagabonds’ of Islam
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/nyregion/sufi-islam-new-york-converts.html?_r=0
Aug 27, 2014
Did Noor Inayat Khan, super secret agent during World War 2, ever visit Delhi?
R.V. Smith
The Hindu
August 24, 2014
Perhaps we’ll never find out, but the story of her father, Inayat Khan, and his legacy in Delhi, is intriguing in its own way
In this time of World War anniversaries few are aware that Noor Inayat Khan, super secret agent, had a close link with a Delhi shrine. And thereby hangs a tale that goes back to Tipu Sultan, who died fighting the British at Seringapatnam during the Fourth Mysore War in 1799. Long after that, one of his descendants founded a Sufi order in Delhi. Hazrat Inayat Khan, great-grandson of Tipu, was a man of many tastes who went abroad in 1920 to give music concerts, having become a musician of note early in life. He was initiated into Sufism by Sheikh Abu Hashim Madani but, during a visit to the West, wed an American woman, Ora Ray Baker (renamed Ameena) who gave birth to four children. According to Sadia Dehlvi, Inayat Khan died in 1927 and was buried in Delhi, though he had settled down with his wife in Suresness, a Parisian suburb. His son, Pir Vilayat Khan succeeded him, whose successor was Pir Zia Khan, head of the Sufi Order International.
Inayat Khan’s daughter, Noor Inayat Khan (just as famous as Mata Hari) was a British Special Operations Agent (Madeline) during World War II. She became the first female radio operator to be sent by the Allies into occupied France to aid the French Resistance (under Gen Charles de Gaulle). Captured by the Germans, Noor was executed in Sept 1944 when she was 30 and was posthumously given the highest civilian award (George Cross) by the British Govt. in 1949. Recently a special postage stamp was issued and a statue installed in her memory in Britain.
Dr. A. Ali, who long ago organised lectures in Delhi by Pir Vilayat Khan on behalf of Hamdard, remembers him as a handsome man with European features, who had a mastery over written and spoken English and hardly looked like an Indian Sufi divine. Incidentally, his half-brother was an American Yogi. The message he preached (like his father) was that one doesn’t have to embrace Islam to become a Sufi. Hazrat Inayat Khan had defined Sufism as a religious philosophy of love, harmony and beauty for all. His dargah is not far from the one of Hazrat Nizamuddin. Situated in an “elegant modern structure”, it is quite unlike the usual conception of a dargah. Some call it the “white man’s dargah” as most of the visitors are foreigners, who stay in the rooms attached to it and attend cultural events hosted by Dr. Fareeda of the West Indies.
There are many in Delhi and elsewhere who do not subscribe to Inayat Khan’s philosophy but still visit the dargah on Fridays when qawwalis are held. This is a departure from tradition as qawwalis are generally held on Thursdays at sufi dargahs.
Hazrat Inayat Khan preceded Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and Osho Rajneesh in popularising Eastern philosophy abroad (to which Pandit Ravi Shankar also made his contribution) and the Beatles and Mia Farrow were among the devotees who came to India. Somehow Inayat Khan did not attract much attention in Delhi, known as the “Threshold of the 22 Khwajas” or saints.
Be that as it may, it cannot be denied that the Sufi Pir’s daughter played a role in countering the Nazi dream of world domination, after trying her hand as a writer of children’s stories and a stint in Paris as an artist. Did Noor Inayat Khan visit Delhi? No one is sure as there is no record of it, but Khushwant Singh, while once commenting on her, thought it was quite likely she did.
For this he cited a member of the Nizami family of Pirs who escorted a pretty westernised young woman to the shrine of Inayat Khan on a cold, bleak, afternoon. Asked for her name she said it reflected the Noor of the saint and disappeared with a wave of her hand. If she was really Noor Inayat, then the incident could have taken place before the war broke though it is more likely that she came as a teenager during her father’s funeral. Those were the days when people came in ships via the Suez Canal, landed in Calcutta or Bombay and then made their way to Delhi by train.
But imagine Noor Inayat arriving at Old Delhi station all by herself later, which in itself was a courageous act.
It was of the likes of her that Jawaharlal Nehru said that such heroines gave the lie to the belief that Eastern women were not meant to lead but to be led. One thinks of this when one visits Inayat Khan’s dargah on a wet Friday evening.
http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/down-memory-lane-a-spy-and-a-saint/article6345043.ece
Inayat Khan’s daughter, Noor Inayat Khan (just as famous as Mata Hari) was a British Special Operations Agent (Madeline) during World War II. She became the first female radio operator to be sent by the Allies into occupied France to aid the French Resistance (under Gen Charles de Gaulle). Captured by the Germans, Noor was executed in Sept 1944 when she was 30 and was posthumously given the highest civilian award (George Cross) by the British Govt. in 1949. Recently a special postage stamp was issued and a statue installed in her memory in Britain.
Dr. A. Ali, who long ago organised lectures in Delhi by Pir Vilayat Khan on behalf of Hamdard, remembers him as a handsome man with European features, who had a mastery over written and spoken English and hardly looked like an Indian Sufi divine. Incidentally, his half-brother was an American Yogi. The message he preached (like his father) was that one doesn’t have to embrace Islam to become a Sufi. Hazrat Inayat Khan had defined Sufism as a religious philosophy of love, harmony and beauty for all. His dargah is not far from the one of Hazrat Nizamuddin. Situated in an “elegant modern structure”, it is quite unlike the usual conception of a dargah. Some call it the “white man’s dargah” as most of the visitors are foreigners, who stay in the rooms attached to it and attend cultural events hosted by Dr. Fareeda of the West Indies.
There are many in Delhi and elsewhere who do not subscribe to Inayat Khan’s philosophy but still visit the dargah on Fridays when qawwalis are held. This is a departure from tradition as qawwalis are generally held on Thursdays at sufi dargahs.
Hazrat Inayat Khan preceded Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and Osho Rajneesh in popularising Eastern philosophy abroad (to which Pandit Ravi Shankar also made his contribution) and the Beatles and Mia Farrow were among the devotees who came to India. Somehow Inayat Khan did not attract much attention in Delhi, known as the “Threshold of the 22 Khwajas” or saints.
Be that as it may, it cannot be denied that the Sufi Pir’s daughter played a role in countering the Nazi dream of world domination, after trying her hand as a writer of children’s stories and a stint in Paris as an artist. Did Noor Inayat Khan visit Delhi? No one is sure as there is no record of it, but Khushwant Singh, while once commenting on her, thought it was quite likely she did.
For this he cited a member of the Nizami family of Pirs who escorted a pretty westernised young woman to the shrine of Inayat Khan on a cold, bleak, afternoon. Asked for her name she said it reflected the Noor of the saint and disappeared with a wave of her hand. If she was really Noor Inayat, then the incident could have taken place before the war broke though it is more likely that she came as a teenager during her father’s funeral. Those were the days when people came in ships via the Suez Canal, landed in Calcutta or Bombay and then made their way to Delhi by train.
But imagine Noor Inayat arriving at Old Delhi station all by herself later, which in itself was a courageous act.
It was of the likes of her that Jawaharlal Nehru said that such heroines gave the lie to the belief that Eastern women were not meant to lead but to be led. One thinks of this when one visits Inayat Khan’s dargah on a wet Friday evening.
http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/down-memory-lane-a-spy-and-a-saint/article6345043.ece
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