Sufism and the struggle within Islam

By Khaleb Khazari-El - World War 4 Report - Brooklyn,NY,USA
July/December 2006

One of the many ways in which the planetary struggle has gone through the proverbial looking glass since the 9-11 attacks is the seeming reversal in the juxtaposition of Western imperialism and Islamic fundamentalism. In the Cold War, the United States was allied with fundamentalist regimes like Saudi Arabia and fundamentalist movements like Afghanistan's Mujahedeen against the threats of communism and radical nationalism. The US, in fact, continues to back fundamentalists—in Saudi Arabia, in Afghanistan, in occupied Iraq. But it is perceived, at least, to be protecting secular modernity from fundamentalist assault. This perception is shared by both the "neo-conservative" policy wonks and the fundamentalists themselves—at least those on the wrong end of Washington's firepower.

If we look to the roots of Islamic fundamentalism, however, 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.

After the Fall of the Caliphate: How Sufism Saved Islam
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.

(...)

A further tragic irony is that sufism, once in the vanguard of anti-imperialist struggle, is now rejected as heresy or, worse still, conflated with imperialism by the new jihadis.
From its origins, sufism was a populist tradition that drew the disaffected who distrusted the leaders of the day as too worldly and corrupt, and sought something more spiritually pure. In its embrace of local and even pre-Islamic traditions, it arguably represented a certain proto-universalism, even pro-secularism.

The contemporary Indian spiritual thinker Maulana Wahiduddin Khan actually traces the roots of the Western Enlightenment to the Islamic revolution of the seventh century, in which the successors of the Prophet overthrew the shirk (idolatry) of the absolutist Persian and Byzantine empires.

The possibly pseudonymous American writer Hakim Bey has even credited sufism with a kind of proto-anarchism, in its extreme suspicion of and often outright opposition to authority, both political and religious.

Sufism continued to be a wellspring of populist sentiment right through the anti-colonialist struggles—yet somewhere along the way, the situation was reversed. Today it is Wahhabism—ironically, the official state doctrine of that most worldly and wealthy of all the Muslim states, Saudi Arabia—which has assumed the mantle of populism and resistance.

All over the Islamic world, the disaffected flock to Wahhabism and related doctrines as the alternative to the corruption of official leaders and their supine stance before imperialism and globalization. And because imperialism and globalization have appropriated the mantles of secularism, pluralism, tolerance, universalism—these are also being rejected. This final reality has much to say about why it is Wahhabism rather than sufism that now provides the wellspring of resistance.

Is the situation reversible? The glimmers of hope lie in the possibilities for the de-coupling of the notions of imperialism and universalism. Contrary to current depressing dogmas of global polarization, a "clash of civilizations," indigenous Islamic dissidence to both fundamentalism and imperialism does exist. Maulana Wahiduddin Khan rejects the terrorist "jihad" as fasad (error, illegitimacy) and poses a "true jihad" of non-violent activism that embraces rather than rejects pluralism.