Sufism and the struggle within Islam

by Khaleb Khazari-El - forwarded to Infoshop News
Friday, July 07 2006

If we look to the roots of Islamic fundamentalism, we find that it came into existence alongside another tradition which was a wellspring of resistance in the colonial era but is now largely forgotten to history. These twin traditions were two branches of the same tree: one throve, the other ultimately withered. Fundamentalism prevailed over the threats of nationalism and communism in the long 20th-century contest as to which ideology would bear the anti-imperialist mantle in the Islamic world. The other tradition did not survive to wage this struggle—but now that the contest has been clearly decided, may be worth a close re-examination. This forgotten tradition is militant sufism.

The story of militant sufism is replete with paradox. Sufism initially represented a proto-universalism, and was opposed by orthodoxy. But revolutionary sufism was, in its day, allied with fundamentalism, itself orthodoxy's backlash against modernity. Yet, the fundamentalists today attack the surviving sufis, seeing their struggle as a unified jihad against both imperialism and heresy.

There are, however, signs that point to the potential for the emergence of a universalist yet localist and autonomist anti-imperialism embodied by neo-sufis and related esoteric or dissident Islamic traditions. As the sufis of the medieval era formed a bridge between Islam and the indigenous spiritual traditions of those areas conquered by Caliphate, today's neo-sufis could serve as a bridge between a non-fundamentalist Islamic anti-imperialism, and more open-minded and libertarian elements of the secular anti-imperialist left in the Islamic world, which is now in danger of being completely marginalized or crushed—especially in places like Iraq, where it is needed most.

Under the pressure of 19th-century European colonialism, sufism broke with the apolitical quietism which had generally characterized the tradition. Today, surviving sufis have similarly rethought the alliance or convergence with fundamentalism which often characterized the era of militancy. It remains to be seen if the surviving secular left elements can overcome the dogmatic rejection of all spiritual traditions as either quietist opiate or fundamentalist reaction—a perception which contributes to their own marginalization, as long-suppressed spiritual thirsts dramatically re-assert themselves.

In his 1988 book The Struggle Within Islam: The Conflict Between Religion and Politics, Indian scholar and statesman Rafiq Zakaria traces the tension to the very beginning, noting that the Prophet Mohammed was both a religious and political leader. This conflict is now at the center of the world stage: a violent struggle within world Islam as to what its stance should be before the assaults of gobalization, secularism and capitalism.

A new radical sufism could offer an alternative to the actually-existing jihad of Wahhabi totalitarianism. But to understand the contemporary juxtaposition of sufism and the jihad, it is necessary to take a brief look at how the struggle between sufism and the more doctrinaire and orthodox manifestations of Islam played out...in the 13th century. We cannot understand where we are without understanding how we got here. Certainly, the 13th-century struggle against the Crusaders weighs very heavily on the mind of contemporary radical Islam; we are unwise to assume that this history doesn't concern us.

Zakaria calls the medieval sufis "bridge builders," who, persecuted as heretics, paradoxically saved Islam following the decline of the Caliphate. As the scene opens, the Abbasid dynasty has fallen. Baghdad, the Caliphate's seat, has been sacked by the Mongols under Hulagu Khan, as had principal centers of learning and commerce like Aleppo. The long war with the Crusaders was followed by a shorter but far more destructive war with the Mongols and Turkic peoples displaced from the Central Asian steppes by the Mongol irruption. The Seljuk Turks, initially a military slave caste that fought for the Aabbasid Caliphate, had long since become the real power behind the throne, and now they had inherited a disintegrating realm. After 500 years and more of a unified Islamic empire which had reached heights of centralized power, culture, learning and wealth, the Caliphate (although continuing to exist in name) has collapsed into fragmented mini-states divided by sectarian strife.

The two main factions were the Sunnis and Shi'ites, but even within these broad tendencies various sects vied—Hanafis, Hanbalis, Ismailis, Kharijites. Each claimed their teachings to be the only true Islam, and seas of blood were spilled over the narrowest of doctrinal distinctions—a symptom of the general social breakdown. Local communities were run by the ulema, the body of scholars (mullahs). As long as they had local control and sharia law was enforced, the mullahs would play along with whatever faction was in power and provide young men to fight. Doctrinal rigidity, therefore, actually abetted the general disintegration.

And yet within a century, three new Islamic empires had emerged onto the world scene, and become new centers of commerce, learning and political power. The Arab world was no longer the imperial center, but the empires of the Ottoman Turks, Safavid Persia and the Moghuls of India would survive into modern times.

How did this come to pass? Zakaria credits the sufis, despite the fact that their doctrines were deemed apostasy by the ulema and nearly all of the ruling factions, and they were at times bitterly persecuted.

Sufism, Islam's mystical tradition, stood in contrast to the ossified ulema. While the ulema split hairs (and the ruling factions split skulls) over doctrinal correctitude, the sufis offered a relaxed attitude towards form and ritual, emphasizing instead spiritual experience. The mullahs of the ulema declared that the "doors of ijtihad (free-thinking or interpretation) were closed," and that taqlid (imitation or precedent) should rule in daily life; the sufis bypassed the debate, holding that good behavior should arise through direct experience of jabarut, or divine power. While the mullahs proscribed music and dance, the principal sufi ritual was the zikr (or dhikr)—literally "recital," but often incorporating use of vigorous rhythmic chanting (hal) and movement to achieve a trance-like state. While the mullahs prohibited alcohol, the sufi poets often used wine as a metaphor for this state of mystical intoxication Despite the best efforts of the mullahs, the sufis attracted wide followings.

In a world of war, their often remote sanctuaries were refuges of peace. Their asceticism and simple piety were also attractive following a long period of decadence. The word "sufi" comes from the name of their tradition in Arabic, tasawuf, which in turn comes from the word su'f, or wool—a reference to their coarse woolen garments. Their basic social unit was the halka, or "circle," a small group of brethren around a particular teacher.

In the declining years of the Caliphate, the great jurist Ghazali (1058-1111), a Persian of Central Asian birth who had become Baghdad's most respected scholar, had sought a rapprochement between the sufis and the ulema. In his work The Savior From Error, he wrote, in a clear and courageous criticism of the ulema, that "those who are so learned about rare forms of divorce can tell you nothing about the simple things of spiritual life, such as the meaning of sincerity towards God or truth in Him." In the implicit truce which was accepted as a result of his work, the mullhas took responsibility for maintaining form and ritual, and punishing transgressors, while the sufis concerned themselves with spiritual uplift.

The sufis were aloof from the palace intrigues and factional jockeying which were endemic in the long decay of the Abbasids. (In one grimly hilarious episode in the ninth century, the Mutazilite schism, which upheld free-thinking and disdained orthodoxy, won over the Caliph Mamun; those who dissented from the doctrine of free-thinking were purged, imprisoned and tortured!) By disdaining riches and power, rather than vying for them, the sufis won a unique moral authority.

While many sufis claim their tradition goes back to the time of the Prophet Mohammed, the first sufi is generally held to be Hasan al-Basri (d. 728), who actually waged public campaigns against corruption in high places in Baghdad. A famous saying attributed to him is: "He that knoweth God loveth him, and he that knoweth the world abstaineth from it."

The second great sufi, disciple of the first and also of Basra, was a woman—Rabia al-Adawiyyah (d. 801), whose teachings emphasized the power of love. The idea of a woman as spiritual leader was itself an affront to the ulema, and to make matters worse, she was a former slave. Dhul Nunal-Misri (d. 861) was arraigned before Caliph Mutawakkil for espousing the doctrine of irfan—direct knowledge of the divine, usually translated as "gnosis." Hussain b. Mansur, better known as al-Hallaj, a wool-carder, was accused of heresy and beheaded for his veneration of Jesus and his declaration "I am the truth." His followers thereafter disavowed—and often defied—all worldly authority. The noted sufi theoretician Yahaya Suhrawardi was executed on the orders of the great Saladin for of his refusal to adhere to orthodoxy. In the face of such repression, some sufis, such as Nuri (d. 907), preached renunciation from the world.

Ghazali himself was forced to flee Baghdad following a political upset and wandered as far west as Egypt. His ideas reached Muslim Spain (ruled by the rival Ummayad Caliphate), where they influenced the jurist and physician Ibn Rushd (known to the West as Averroes) and especially the great sufi scholar and mystic Ibn al-Arabi (1165-1201), who enunciated the doctrine of wilayah (also rendered vilayat, literally "friendship"), identification of human and creator. This non-dualism was mirrored in an even more daring and prescient universalism. Al-Arabi wrote: "Beware of confining yourself to a particular belief and denying all else, for much good would elude you—indeed, the knowledge of reality would elude you. Be in yourself a matter for all forms of belief, for God is too vast and tremendous to be restricted to one belief rather than another."

When he passed through Baghdad on his pilgrimage to Mecca, these controversial teachings won Arabi an attempt on his life. But his sojourn in Baghdad also afforded Arabi the opportunity to meet Jalaluddin Rumi, the Persian poet and perhaps the best-known of the medieval sufis today. Rumi's masterwork of mystical poetry, the Masnavi, was held by many to be the "Pahlavi (Persian) Koran"

As sufism's popularity grew, the schools around various teachers congealed into more formal tarikas, or orders. Ghazali's disciple Abd al-Qadir Jilani (1077-1166), also known as Ghuath al-Azam or the "Sultan of Saints," preached in Baghdad and founded the Qadiri Order. As the mullahs meted out death and justified war over perceived heresy, one of Jilani's aphorisms was "Never accuse anyone of religious infidelity." His tomb in Baghdad draws thousands of pilgrims annually. So does the tomb of his own disciple Umar al-Suhrawardi (d. 1234), who went on to found the Suhrawardi Order. Another Iraq mausoleum is that of Ahmad al-Rifa'i (d. 1183), founder of the Rifa'i Order (the Howling Dervishes). Abd al-Qadir's own disciple Shuayab Abu Madyan became the patron saint of Algeria. The Naqshbandi Order claims a lineage back to Abu Bakr, the first caliph after the Prophet Mohammed, but its popularity among the Turkic peoples suggests a Central Asian origin, and it was likely brought to Baghdad from Bukhara by the sufi Abdul Khaliq al-Ghujdawani (d. 1179). Abu Hanifa (699-767), the founder of one of the four great schools of Sunni thought (Hanafi, Hanbali, Maliki and Shafii), is held by many to also be founder of the Banna Order (the Builders), which the 20th-century scholar Idries Shah links to the origins of the Masons. Hanifi certainly propounded an activist doctrine: "Practice your knowledge, for knowledge without practice is a body without life."

Writes Rafiq Zakaria: "It is paradoxical that though these sufis refused to bow down to authority, their teachings made the task of governments, especially in states with mixed ethnic and religious populations, much easier. Had it not been for the environment of peace, goodwill and mutual understanding that they generated, Islam would not have become so readily acceptable to non-Muslims nor would Muslim rulers have been able to run their administrations as peacefully as they did."

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Eventually, the rulers began to see the utility of the sufis in both keeping peace and spreading Islam. While the Qadiris and Chishtis generally remained far removed from the seats of power, the Suhrawardis and Naqshbandis became important advisors to the Moghul and Ottoman courts. The Naqshbandis, or Silent Dervishes (so known for their rejection of the vocal zikr), achieved a kind of officialdom as the favored order of the Ottoman state. Another popular Turkish order are the Mevlevi, the classical "Whirling Dervishes," thusly known for their ecstatic dance ritual. The Mevlevi are the order most closely associated with Rumi, who is buried in Konya, Turkey.

While sufism was primarily a Sunni phenomenon, there were significant Shi'ite orders as well. The founder of the Shi'ite Safavid dynasty, Shah Ismail, embraced the sufis, although there was a backlash against them in Persia after his death in 1524. The Alevi Order took hold in Anatolia, merging Shia with ancient Turkic traditions from Central Asia. In contrast to the "official" Naqshbandis, the Alevis were more of a popular and rural phenomenon, seeing themselves the "true Turks," who kept alive indigenous Turkish culture and folklore against the "Arabized" Sunni Ottomans.

Throughout the medieval period there had been twin manifestations of sufism's disdain for authority: the quietist strain, which sought retreat to remote sanctuaries, and the activist tendency, which consciously challenged authority. In the 19th century, the assaults of modernism and imperialism would force the matter—giving birth to a not only activist but actually militant and revolutionary sufism.

The first and most successful of the sufi revolutionaries was Amir Abd al-Qadir (also rendered al-Kader) al-Jazairi (1808-1883), of the Qadiri Order, who from his base in Oran began resisting the French almost immediately upon their 1830 arriveal in Algeria. The French originally saw in him a proxy force to fight the Ottoman Turks and signed treaties granting him wide autonomy over much of the country. His followers proclaimed him Nasir al-Din, champion of the faith, dey of Algeria. France retained real control only over a few coastal enclaves. When Paris realized it had actually lost control of the land it had wrested from the Turks, the treaties were broken and new military campaigns launched. Alas, as the sufi tarikas became military orders, violent factionalism also emerged, and al-Qadir was soon waging a civil war with the rival Tijani, Tayyibi and Darqawa orders. These divisions were skillfully exploited by the French, who especially groomed the Tayyibi of Morocco as a proxy force against al-Qadir. As Tayyibi forces invaded al-Qadir's realm from the west, French fleets arrived on the coast and colonial troops pressed inland. Fighting on two fronts, al-Qadir was forced to surrender to the French in 1847. It was France's first counterinsurgency war on foreign soil.

In Sudan, then under Anglo-Egyptian control, Muhammed Ahmad was declared by his followers the Mahdi, or "divinely guided one." In the 1885 Battle of Khartoum, his dervish army defeated British forces under Gen. Charles Gordon. The Mahdi died unexpectedly in the immediate aftermath of his triumph, but his successor Khalifah 'Abd Allah (actually proclaimed caliph, as his name implies) ruled an independent sufi state from Omdurman, just across the Nile from Khartoum, and in 1888 even attempted an invasion of Egypt. The rebel state persisted until 1898, when Gen. Horatio Herbert Kitchener led a force of 8,200 British troops and 17,600 Sudanese and Egyptians up the Nile to take the city. For all this, they were still vastly outnumbered by the dervishes, but British automatic artillery won the day, mowing down the waves of sufi horsemen. British rule was restored to the Sudan.

In Somalia, where the British had also extended control, Mohammed Abdullah Hasan of the Salihiyah Order, one of the more puritanical, emulated the Mahdi's example and launched an insurgency in 1899. Dubbed the "Mad Mullah" by the British, he succeeded in wresting a large area of northern Somalia from their control. The uprising was not put down until Hasan's death in 1920, when a Royal Air Force squadron recently returned from action in World War I was deployed to bomb the dervish capital at Taleex.

In Libya, the last Ottoman holding in North Africa, Mohammed Ali al-Sanusi (1787-1859), the "Grand Sanusi," established the Sanusi Order in the 1840s, which also evolved into a military order as protector of the caravan routes, and soon became the real power in the interior, with the Turks controlling only the coast in more than name.

The ferment spread throughout the Maghreb and even into sub-Saharan Africa. In Morocco, where the sultanate fell under growing French sway, the sufi Ahmad Ibn Idris (1760-1837), founder of the Idrisiya Order, attempted to reconcile sufism and Wahhabism.

The Moroccan sufi Ahmad al-Tifani (1737-1815) founded Tifani Order, which spread its message of armed struggle against non-Muslim rulers throughout North and West Africa. The Tifani militant Hajji Umar Tali (1794-1864) founded an Islamic state in Senegal, dispatching the French who had reduced the local rulers to mere proxies. This state survived until the French wrested it from his successors in 1893. Further down the coast, the black sufi Samori Ture founded an Islamic state that extended through much of what is now Guinea, Mali, Sierra Leone and Cote d'Ivoire. It lasted from 1882 until his capture by the French in 1898.

In 1885, the sufi warrior Mohammed Mustafa Ould Sheikh Mohammed Fadel—known as Ma el-Ainin ("Water of the Eyes")—took up arms to drive the newly-arrived Spanish from Rio de Oro. He fought both the Spanish and French with aid from the Moroccan sultanate. But, angered by perceived Moroccan subservience to the French and insufficient support for his movement, he finally made his own bid for power. In 1910, his supporters rose in Tiznit and declared him sultan; he then marched against Fez, where he was defeated and killed by French forces.

In India, Shah Wali Allah (1702-62) also represented a sufi-Wahhabi convergence. One of his followers, Sayyid Ahmed, launched an insurgency against the British-protected Sikh state in Punjab. In Bengal, Hajji Sharjat Allah (1781-1840), launched an uprising against the newly-arrived British, which was put down with much bloodshed.

The ferment also extended to the Caucasus and Central Asia. The North Caucasus realms of Chechnya and Dagestan had been under official Ottoman rule but effectively independent until the armies of the Czar began their drive for conquest in the 18th century. The Naqshbandi warrior Shaykh Mansur Ushurma declared a jihad and inflicted a crushing defeat on the Russians at the Sunzha River in 1785. He was briefly able to unite much of Chechnya and Dagestan under his rule. Shaykh Mansur's followers continued their insurgency against the Czarist forces even after his death in prison in 1793. Full-scale armed revolt resumed in 1824, this time under the Naqshbandi Shaykh Imam Shamil, who rebuilt an Islamic state in Chechnya and Dagestan before his capture in 1859.

Peace didn't last long, but it was Russia's own intolerance of sufism which broke it. In 1861, a Daghestani shepherd named Kunta Haji Kishiev became the first in the region to embrace the Qadiri order, which, unlike the Naqshbandis, allowed vocal zikr, ecstatic music and dancing. Initially, Kunta Haji counseled peace with the Russians. But as his popularity surged, many veteran fighters from Shamil's disbanded army fell into his orbit—so alarming the Russians that he was arrested and exiled in 1864. That same year at Shali in Chechnya, Russian troops fired on over 4,000 Qadiri dervishes, killing scores and igniting a fresh wave of violence. Together with the rejuvenated Naqshbandis, the Qadiris rose up against the Romanovs repeatedly, hasrassing Czarist forces in the Caucasus through the Bolshevik Revolution.

In the revolutionary years, a Qadiri-Naqshbandi movement led by Shaykh Uzun Haji battled both the White and the Red armies to create a "North Caucasian Emirate." The intransigent Uzun Haji—whose tomb remains a pilgrimage site for Chechen Muslims—purportedly said: "I am weaving a rope, to hang engineers, students and in general all those who write from left to right." His movement was crushed in 1925, but the Soviets, branding the sufis "bandits," "criminals" and "counter-revolutionaries," continued to arrest, execute and deport the "zikrists." In World War II, Stalin accused the sufis of still-unproven collaboration with the Nazis, and in 1944 forcibly relocated six entire Caucasian nationalities, including the Chechen and Ingush, to camps in Central Asia. More than a million Caucasus Muslims were deported.

In Russian-controlled Tartarstan, Bahal Din Vaishi (1804-1893) launched an unarmed and peaceful movement of non-cooperation with the Czarist forces. He was nonetheless arrested, declared insane and interned in an asylum. His followers were deported to Siberia, and many were tortured.

In far Xinkiang, Chinese-ruled Central Asian homeland of the Turkic and Muslim Uighur people, these dynamics were also felt. Naqshbandi sufis led repeated Uighur uprisings from the 1820s onwards against China's reigning Manchus, who were under the increasing sway of Western and especially British imperialism. Finally, the sufi warrior Yaqub Beg succeeded in driving out the Manchus and establishing an independent Uighur state, dubbed East Turkestan, which lasted for ten years from 1867. A second short-lived Eastern Turkestan Islamic Republic was declared in Kashgar in 1933, and a decade later, a third such republic was proclaimed near Yili, surviving as an autonomous zone loyal to Chiang Kai-Shek's Kuomintang until the Communists took over in 1949. There were precedents elsewhere in China, where Ma Ming-hsin (d. 1781) had launched an Islamic revival movement in the 18th century. In Yunan, the warrior Tu Wenshin, inspired by his teachings, had driven out the Manchus and established a Muslim state, declaring himself "Sultan Sulayman."

In short, virtually no part of the Islamic world was untouched by the surgence of militant mysticism. But the movement ultimately represented a final rebellion on the part of an old order that was inexorably passing away. The next and ultimately more successful anti-colonialist surgence, especially gaining ground in the post-World War II era, would embrace rather than reject modernity—seeking to harness rationalism and nationalism against the hegemony of the very European societies which had given them birth. Perhaps the key moment of transition was the formal abolition of the Caliphate in 1924 by the Turkish nationalist leader Kemal Ataturk, who came to power after the Ottoman empire collapsed at the end of World War I.

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Scholars generally view sufism as a quaint and irrelevant anachronism in the contemporary world. J. Spencer Trimingham wrote in his classic work, The Sufi Orders in Islam (Oxford 1973): "The older sections in a changing society feel a nostalgic longing for elements of the past. The poetry and humanism of a Rumi influence many new men too. But these must be placed within the whole setting of the secularization of society. These are 'survivals' from an old way of life; they are no longer the ruling forces in men's lives"

But Trimingham could not have anticipated the voluble fundamentalist reaction against secularism which the Islamic world has witnessed since he wrote those words. Sufism, like related deep-rooted doctrines of Islamic universalism, is under violent attack by ascendant fundamentalism today. Meanwhile, a vulgar Islamophobia holds ever-greater sway in the West, especially represented in the US by the so-called "neocons" who have charted the Bush administration's hyper-imperialist adventures. While spectacular jihadist attacks in New York, London and Madrid make global headlines, the far more frequent manifestations of what is essentially a violent struggle within Islam are buried in the back pages.

On March 19, 2005, up to 50 worshippers were left dead and twice as many wounded in a bomb blast at a shrine to the 19th-century sufi saint Pir Rakhel Shah at Gandhawa in Pakistan's conflicted province of Baluchistan. The bomb went off as pilgrims at the shirne had lined up for a meal and were being served food. Although the shrine is at a Shi'ite mosque, it is revered by Sunnis as well. The explosion left a two-foot-deep crater at the shrine. Thousands of pilgrims who had arrived to commemorate the death of the saint fled the area, overwhelming local bus service. "Everyone comes here, even Hindus. There is no distinction here between a Shi'ite and a Sunni," said the shrine's caretaker, Syed Sadiq Shah. "God's curse be on those who did this. They have killed innocent people."

On May 27, 2005, at least 25 were left dead and some 200 wounded in a suicide bombing at the Bari Imam sufi shrine at Nurpur village outside Pakistan's capital, Islamabad. Thousands of devotees were attending the last day of a five-day festival at the time of the explosion. Worshippers had been waiting for a prominent Shi'ite cleric to address the gathering when the bomb went off. "Today was the annual festival of Bari Imam. Devotees had come from all over Pakistan. Shi'ites and Sunnis were praying together. As soon as prayers started, there was a blast. Many devotees were martyred and many more injured," said Qamar Haider, a Shi'ite imam.

The popular shrine to Bari Imam, who helped bring Islam to region in the 17th century, is visited by both Shi'ites and Sunnis and has traditionally been seen as a symbol of harmony between the two communities. But both sects claim the shrine, which has been controlled by Sunnis for the past two decades, and it had recently been subject to growing tensions. The Sunni custodian of the shrine and two other people were shot dead near the compound in February 2005.

The urs, or festival, marked the death anniversary of Bari Imam, who was born Shah Abdul Latif Kazmi in 1617 in Jhelum, and traveled widely to learn with scholars of various schools, visiting Kashmir, Badakhshan, Bukhara, Mashhad, Baghdad, Damascus and Mecca. His spiritual master Hayat-al-Mir (Zinda Pir) gave him the title of Bari Imam. He went on to convert thousands of Hindus to Islam, and the Moghul Emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir is said to have come there to pay respects at at Nurpur. Bari Imam died in 1705 and was buried at Nurpur Shahan, where his urs is held every year with great fervor.

The sufi shrines are likely targeted precisely because they are venerated by Sunnis and Shi'ites alike in a Pakistan, which has witnessed a bloody dialectic of terror between Sunni and Shi'ite fundamentalists. In October 2004, 36 were killed in a car-bomb attack on a Sunni congregation in Multan, Punjab province. A bombing of a Shi'ite mosque in Sialkot, Punjab, earlier that month killed 19 people. In March 2004, 46 were killed and 160 injured in Quetta, capital of Baluchistan province, in an attack on Shi'ite pilgrims. Gunmen sprayed bullets and lobbed grenades at crowds of pilgrims gathered in the city for celebrations of Ashura, marking the death of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. In April 2002, a bomb exploded near midnight at a Shi'ite mosque at Bukker, Punjab, killing 12 worshipers, all of them women and children. The explosion went off in the women's section of the mosque, where thousands of Shi'ites had gathered from around the country for the Ashura festival. In February 2002, 11 were killed when gunmen fired on worshipers at a Shi'ite mosque in the northern city of Rawalpindi.