Sabrina Tavernise from Lahore in The New York Times:
It is Sufism, a mystical form of Islam brought into South Asia by wandering thinkers who spread the religion east from the Arabian Peninsula. They carried a message of equality that was deeply appealing to indigenous societies riven by caste and poverty. To this day, Sufi shrines stand out in Islam for allowing women free access.
In modern times, Pakistan’s Sufis have been challenged by a stricter form of Islam that dominates in Saudi Arabia. That orthodox, often political Islam was encouraged in Pakistan in the 1980s by the American-supported dictator, Muhammad Zia ul-Haq. Since then, the fundamentalists’ aggressive stance has tended to eclipse that of their moderate kin, whose shrines and processions have become targets in the war here.
But if last week’s stomping, twirling, singing, drumming kaleidoscope of a crowd is any indication, Sufism still has a powerful appeal. More:
Modern Sufi leaders have become part of Pakistan’s corrupt ruling elite, favoured by the West not for their ‘moderation’ but for their compliance. Qalandar Bux Memon at Naked Punch:
I was sitting at the shrine of Shah Kamal in Lahore, with the dhol beats and whirling dervishes dancing to connect to the ‘centre of the universe in themselves’, when a friend turned and pointed to an old German fellow sitting a few meters from us. “He just delivered a lecture on Sufism. He is an expert on the subject, and talked about how it’s a religion of peace and love.”
I replied curtly: “Have you ever been in love? Have you had your heart broken? What peace is there in that state? What peace was there when Mansur had his head chopped off on the orders of the Baghdadi Emperor? What peace was there when Shah Inayat was fighting against the Mughal emperor for his life and that of his commune? What peace is there in Sassui’s peeling feet as she searches for her beloved through the desert of Sindh?”
My friend agreed and said: “But they pay me – I have to go along with them.” More:
Part two of Qalandar Bux Memon’s series on Sufism, focusing on the history of Sufism and the positive role it could play, will be published at The Samosa.
Ayesha Siddiqua on the battle between Sufi and Salafi Islam. From Dawn:
Pakistan, in fact, makes an interesting case study for the battle between Sufi Islam and the much more rabid Salafi Islam for two obvious reasons. First, it is a country with equally dominant traditions and institutions of Sufi Islam that were critical in spreading the religion in the Indian Subcontinent. For that reason, many argue that Punjab, especially southern Punjab, which has drawn international attention particularly after the Mumbai attacks, cannot fall to Salafi Islam because it is a hub of Sufi – or what is popularly known as Barelvi – Islam. The wife of Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, Farahnaz Isphani, expressed such views a few months ago in a CNN interview. Second, unlike Turkey, where Sufi institutions were throttled by Kamal Attaturk, or Saudi Arabia, where the state shut down similar institutions to accommodate Salafi Islam, Sufi traditions have continued to thrive in Pakistan.
This raises the question about the viability of Sufi Islam to push back the forces of religious fundamentalism and extremism. Will Sufi Islam ultimately win the battle against Salafi Islam? More importantly, how has Salafi Islam managed to build inroads in areas once considered to be strongholds of Salafi Islam.? The prime minister’s own home town Multan and all of southern Punjab have fallen pray to militancy and extremism. So, what is it that has pushed people away from the traditional patterns of faith?
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The believers in Islamic mysticism embrace a personal approach to their faith and a different outlook on how to run their country’s government. Nicholas Schmidle in the Smithsonian:
A Sufi pilgrim dances at the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, in Sehwan Sharif, Pakistan. Photograph by Aaron Huey
In the desert swelter of southern Pakistan, the scent of rosewater mixed with a waft of hashish smoke. Drummers pounded away as celebrants swathed in red pushed a camel bedecked with garlands, tinsel and multihued scarfs through the heaving crowd. A man skirted past, grinning and dancing, his face glistening like the golden dome of a shrine nearby. “Mast Qalandar!” he cried. “The ecstasy of Qalandar!”
The camel reached a courtyard packed with hundreds of men jumping in place with their hands in the air, chanting “Qalandar!” for the saint buried inside the shrine. The men threw rose petals at a dozen women who danced in what seemed like a mosh pit near the shrine’s entrance. Enraptured, one woman placed her hands on her knees and threw her head back and forth; another bounced and jiggled as if she were astride a trotting horse. The drumming and dancing never stopped, not even for the call to prayer.
I stood at the edge of the courtyard and asked a young man named Abbas to explain this dancing, called dhamaal. Though dancing is central to the Islamic tradition known as Sufism, dhamaal is particular to some South Asian Sufis. “When a djinn infects a human body,” Abbas said, referring to one of the spirits that populate Islamic belief (and known in the West as “genies”), “the only way we can get rid of it is by coming here to do dhamaal.” A woman stumbled toward us with her eyes closed and passed out at our feet. Abbas didn’t seem to notice, so I pretended not to either.
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Turkish educators are offering an alternative approach to religious schools that could reduce extremists’ influence. Sabrina Tavernise reports from Karachi in The New York Times:
Praying in Pakistan has not been easy for Mesut Kacmaz, a Muslim teacher from Turkey.
He tried the mosque near his house, but it had Israeli and Danish flags painted on the floor for people to step on. The mosque near where he works warned him never to return wearing a tie. Pakistanis everywhere assume he is not Muslim because he has no beard.
“Kill, fight, shoot,” Mr. Kacmaz said. “This is a misinterpretation of Islam.”
But that view is common in Pakistan, a frontier land for the future of Islam, where schools, nourished by Saudi and American money dating back to the 1980s, have spread Islamic radicalism through the poorest parts of society. With a literacy rate of just 50 percent and a public school system near collapse, the country is particularly vulnerable.
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