SUFI MUSLIMS
Mystical power
Why Sufi Muslims, for centuries the
most ferocious soldiers of Islam, could be our most valuable allies in
the fight against extremism
By Philip Jenkins
New York Times
January 25, 2009
THIRTY YEARS AGO this month, the
collapse of the Shah's government marked the launch of Iran's Islamic
Revolution, and since that point the topic of Islam has rarely been out
of the headlines. All too often, we hear about Islam in the context of
intolerance and, often, violence -- of Al Qaeda savagery, of Taliban
misogyny, of nuclear weapons in Pakistan and perhaps in Iran itself.
Even in Europe, many fear the growth of a radical Islamic presence. For
three decades, Western observers have worked fervently to comprehend
Islam's global power and appeal, its ability to inspire the poor and to
topple governments. But in all that intense attention, most observers
have missed a crucial part of the story: a global web of devout
religious brotherhoods that by all logic should be a critical ally
against extremism.
Sufis are the power that has made
Islam the world's second-largest religion, with perhaps 1.2 billion
adherents. Not a sect of Islam, but rather heirs of an ancient mystical
tradition within both the Sunni and Shia branches of the faith, Sufis
have through the centuries combined their inward quest with the defense
and expansion of Islam worldwide. At once mystics and elite soldiers,
dervishes and preachers, charismatic wonder-workers and power-brokers,
ascetic Sufis have always been in the vanguard of Islam. While pushing
forward the physical borders of Islam, they have been essential to the
spiritual and cultural fullness of the faith. Today, the Sufi tradition
is deeply threaded through the power structures of many Muslim
countries, and the orders are enjoying a worldwide renaissance.
To look at Islam without seeing the
Sufis is to miss the heart of the matter. Without taking account of the
Sufis, we cannot understand the origins of most contemporary political
currents in the Middle East and Muslim South Asia, and of many
influential political parties. We can't comprehend the huge popular
appeal of Islam for
women, who so often seem excluded
from Muslim life. Sufis are central to the ability of Muslim
communities to survive savage persecutions -- in Chechnya, in Kosovo --
and then launch devastating insurgencies. They are the muscle and sinew
of the faith.
And, however startling this may
seem, these very Sufis -- these dedicated defenders and evangelists of
mystical Islam -- are potentially vital allies for the nations of the
West. Many observers see a stark confrontation between the West and
Islam, a global conflict that entered a traumatic new phase with the
Iranian revolution. But that perspective ignores basic conflicts within
the Muslim world itself, a global clash of values over the nature of
religious practice, no less than overtly political issues. For the
Islamists -- for hard-line fundamentalists like the Saudi Wahhabis and
the Taliban -- the Sufis are deadly enemies, who draw on practices
alien to the Quran. Where Islamists rise to power, Sufis are persecuted
or driven underground; but where Sufis remain in the ascendant, it is
the radical Islamist groups who must fight to survive.
Around the world, the Sufis are
struggling against violent fundamentalists who are at once their deadly
foes, and ours. To look at Islam without seeing the Sufis is to be
ignorant of a crucial clash of civilizations in today's world: not the
conflict between Islam and the West, but an epochal struggle within
Islam itself.
If the word "Sufi" conjures up any
images for Americans, they normally involve mystical poetry or dance.
Thirteenth century poet Rumi was a legendary Sufi, as are Turkey's
whirling dervishes. But these are just the most visible expressions of
a movement that runs deeply through the last thousand years of Islam.
Emerging around the year 800, they
were originally pious devotees, whose poor woolen clothes showed their
humility: "Sufi" comes from the Arabic word for wool. Above all, the
Sufis sought the divine reality or ultimate truth that stands above all
the illusions and deceptions of the material world. In order to achieve
ecstatic union with God, they incorporated techniques of sound and
movement -- chanting and music, swaying and dance. Believers joined in
tight-knit brotherhoods or tariqahs, each following a charismatic
leader (shaykh). Among the dozens of these orders, a few grew to
achieve special influence, and some operate in dozens of nations,
including the United States.
But the orders are more than
confraternities of pious devotees. Early in their history, Sufis
developed a powerful military streak, making them the knights of Islam,
as well as the monks and mystics. Like the Japanese samurai, the
brotherhoods trained their followers to amazing feats of devotion and
overcoming pain. Fanatical dervish warriors were the special forces of
every Islamic army from the 13th century through the end of the 19th.
The expansion of Islam outside the
core areas of the Middle East is above all a Sufi story. Sufi orders
led the armies that conquered lands in Central and South Asia, and in
Southeastern Europe; through their piety and their mysticism, the
brotherhoods then won the local populations over to Islam. They
presented an Islam that incorporated local traditions and worship
styles, including Christian saints and Hindu gods. Today, Sufi styles
and practices dominate in the non-Arab Muslim world: in India and
Pakistan, in Indonesia and Malaysia, Nigeria and Senegal, and in the
Muslim countries of Central Asia, such as Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
Over the centuries, the territories
where Sufi orders seeded Islam have evolved from the faith's frontiers
to its demographic heartlands. These regions now encompass Islam's
largest and fastest-growing populations. Of the eight nations with the
world's largest Muslim communities, only one (Egypt) is Arab. A fifth
of the world's Muslims today identify with Sufism, and for many
millions more, Sufism is simply part of the air they breathe.
The Sufi orders enhanced their
political role as Western empires encroached. When Islam was under
threat, the Sufis were the trained soldiers, and their close-knit
brotherhoods allowed them to form devastatingly effective resistance
movements. Sufi orders led anti-colonial movements from Morocco to
Indonesia. Most Americans, for instance, have heard of the stubborn
Chechen guerrillas, but few realize how absolutely this movement is
rooted in Sufism. When the Russians pushed south into Muslim lands in
the 19th century, the heroic Sufi sheikh Imam Shamil launched a
decades-long guerrilla war. Even Stalin's terror campaigns could not
root out the Sufi brotherhoods. The fearsome leader of modern-day
Chechen resistance, Shamil Basayev, was named for the original imam.
A similar story can be told of other
oppressed peoples, in Kurdistan, Kashmir, Albania, Kosovo, and
elsewhere, who owed their solidarity and cohesion to the immense power
of the Sufi brotherhoods.
The Sufis might sound like America's
worst nightmare. Not only do they ground political activism in
religion, but their faith spreads through intense and secretive
brotherhoods, led by charismatic masters: this recalls every sinister
stereotype of Muslim fanaticism that potboiler thrillers have offered
us over the decades. But it would be a terrible mistake to see the
Sufis as enemies. Sufis certainly have fought Western forces through
the years, and Sufi-founded movements have on occasion engaged in
terrorist actions -- witness the Chechens. But in the vast majority of
cases, such militancy has been essentially defensive, resisting brutal
colonial occupations. This is very different from the aggressive global
confrontation pursued by groups such as Al Qaeda.
Today, moreover, Sufi brotherhoods
face a deadly danger from the strict puritanical or fundamentalist
Islam represented by Qaeda and similar movements, which are as
threatening to the Sufi brotherhoods as they are to the West. To the
extent that we, like the Sufis, face a real danger from violent jihadi
fundamentalism, our interests are closely aligned with those of the
Sufis.
But the Sufis are much more than
tactical allies for the West: they are, potentially, the greatest hope
for pluralism and democracy within Muslim nations. The Sufi religious
outlook has little of the uncompromising intolerance that characterizes
the fundamentalists. They have no fear of music, poetry, and other
artistic forms -- these are central to their sense of the faith's
beauty -- and the brotherhoods cherish intellectual exploration.
Progressive Sufi thinkers are quite open to modern knowledge and
science.
From their beginnings, too, Sufi
traditions have been religiously inclusive. Wherever the orders
flourish, popular Islamic religion focuses on the tombs of saints and
sheikhs, who believers venerate with song and ritual dance. In fact,
they behave much like traditional-minded Catholics do when they visit
their own shrines in Mexico or southern Italy. People organize
processions, they seek healing miracles, and women are welcome among
the crowds. While proudly Islamic, Sufi believers have always been in
dialogue with other great religions.
This open-mindedness contrasts with
the much harsher views of the fundamentalists, who we know by various
names. Salafism claims to teach a return to the pure religion taught by
the prophet Muhammad in the seventh century, and in that early Islamic
community Salafis think they can find all they need to know about life
and law. The most powerful and best-known version of this
back-to-basics ideology is the Wahhabi movement that emerged in the
18th century, and which in modern times has built a worldwide presence
on the strength of Saudi oil money. At its most extreme, this exclusive
tradition rejects knowledge that is not clearly rooted in the Quran and
Islamic legal thought, and regards other religions and cultures as
dangerous rivals lacking any redeeming virtues. Al Qaeda and its
affiliates represent an extreme and savage manifestation of this
fundamentalist current.
As fundamentalist Islam spreads
around the world, Sufism is one of its targets, even in such
strongholds as Indonesia, Pakistan, and Nigeria. Often this comes in
the form of ideological struggle, but open violence has broken out as
well. Sudan's Islamist government attacks the black Sufi population of
Darfur; in Iraq, suicide bombers target Sufi centers. Sufis have
literally everything to lose from the continued advance of the Islamist
extremists.
But Sufis are anything but passive
victims, and in their resilience lies their true importance to the
West. In many nations, Sufi brotherhoods exercise influence within
local regimes, and those alliances allow them to drive back radicalism.
Sufi brotherhoods have emerged as critical supporters of government in
several post-Communist regimes, including in former Yugoslav regions
like Kosovo and Bosnia, and in Albania. When a Qaeda-affiliated
Islamist movement arose in Uzbekistan, the government's intimate
alliance with the Sufi orders allowed it to destroy the insurgents
quite thoroughly. Syria cultivates tolerant-minded Sufi orders as the
best means of fending off Islamist subversion. For similar reasons,
even the Chinese government openly favors Sufism. Hard as they try,
fundamentalist radicals find it impossible to gain much of a foothold
in societies where Islam is synonymous with Sufism, and where Sufi
loyalty is deeply tied to cultural and national identity.
In 2007, the influential RAND
Corporation issued a major report titled "Building Moderate Muslim
Networks," which urged the US government to form links with Muslim
groups that opposed Islamist extremism. The report stressed the Sufi
role as moderate traditionalists open to change, and thus as potential
allies against violence.
Some Western nations are just now
grasping the rich rewards that would come from an alliance with the
Sufi, with Muslim forces who can claim such impeccable historical and
religious credentials. The British government especially has befriended
the Sufi orders, and has made groups like the British Muslim Forum and
the Sufi Muslim Council its main conversation partners in the Muslim
community.
Sufis, better than anyone, can tell
disaffected young Muslims that the quest for peace is not a surrender
to Western oppression, still less a betrayal of Islam, but rather a
return to the faith's deepest roots. And while Sufis have religious
reasons for favoring peaceful and orderly societies, they also stand to
benefit mightily from government support in their struggle against the
fanatics. As the fundamentalists have expanded, they press hard on
Muslim populations who are overwhelmingly drawn from countries where
the Sufi current has always dominated Islamic life, from Pakistan,
Turkey, and North Africa.
If this British model works, it
would encourage the growth of a Euro-Islam that could reconcile easily
with modernity and democracy, while yielding nothing of its religious
content.
Nobody is pretending that building
bridges with Sufis will resolve the many problems that divide the West
from the Islamic world. In countries like Afghanistan or Somalia,
warfare and violence might be so deeply engraved into the culture that
they can never be expunged. Yet in so many lands, reviving Sufi
traditions provide an effective bastion against terrorism, much
stronger than anything the West could supply by military means alone.
The West's best hope for global peace is not a decline or
secularization of Islam, but rather a renewal and strengthening of that
faith, and above all of its spiritual and mystical dimensions.
Philip Jenkins is Distinguished
Senior Fellow at the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor
University. He is author of "The Lost History of Christianity: The
Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and
Asia -- and How It Died" (HarperOne, 2008).