They Believe from the Heart

By Declan Walsh - The Guardian - London, U.K.
Monday, September 10, 2007

Sehwan Sharif: Soaked in sweat and enraptured by the primal drumbeat, the crowd swirled, curled and yelled high praise to the heavens.

Dancing women span like dervishes, whipping their hair in wide arcs. Old men huddled over a pipe, their eyeballs dewy behind a hashish haze.

Fireworks fizzed and popped; families dozed on the rooftops. And in the glittering shrine at the heart of the carnival, a young man fell to his knees before a bed of candles, said his prayer and softly wept.

(...)

Prayer, party, emotion, intoxication - every year a horde of devotees descends on Sehwan Sharif, a sleepy town in southern Sindh province in Pakistan, for one of the largest Sufi festivals in the world.

It is Glastonbury, Rio and Lourdes wrapped into one, a riotous three-day celebration ahead of the holy month of Ramadan, marking the death of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, a much-loved Sufi saint, 755 years ago.

Some said this year's festival, which took place last weekend, was attended by one million people, others said two. But nobody was really counting.

(...)

The crowds squeezed into the narrow alleyways surrounding the hilltop tomb of Qalandar, a saint from present-day Azerbaijan who wandered through this area in the 13th century, inspiring a remarkably resilient cult that attracts Hindus as well as Muslims.

"Qalandar is among a handful of Sufis of the 13th century who won people's hearts through a tolerant Islam. He still has much devotion among the people today," said Hamid Akhund, a former secretary of culture of the Sindh government.

Conga-lines of worshippers carrying chadors - long red cloths embroidered with Qur'anic verse - jostled through the throng to reach the shrine. But the most striking scenes were outside, at the golden gate, where women dancing to beating drums worked themselves into a frenzy.

Some paused to throw themselves at the gate in prayer, others flopped to the ground in exhaustion. A wall of men stood behind them, thrusting their hands into the air with the rhythm and energy of a teenage rave-goer.

Such dancing is unusual in Sufism, but it typifies the gentle beliefs of many Pakistanis. They identify little with the grim-faced mullahs who, encouraged by military regimes, have dominated religious discourse in recent years.

"We have a lot to learn from these people," said a woman from a conservative Peshawar family, standing on a balcony overlooking the scenes. "We believe from the head, but they believe from the heart," she said.

[More about Lal Shahbaz Qalandar (1177-1274) http://www.storyofpakistan.com/contribute.asp?artid=C066]

[picture from Lal Shahbaz Qalandar site
http://jhoolelal.com/].