I Am a Lover

By Sameer Arshad, "Is Sufism a bulwark against radicalism?" - The Times Of India - India
Sunday, March 22, 2009

‘I’m a lover. I deal in love. Sow flowers and make your surroundings a garden. Don't sow thorns, for they’ll prick you. We’re one body, whoever tortures another, wounds himself’

The 17th century Sufi Rehman Baba, one of Pashto’s most widely read poets on either side of the Durand Line, became famous with lines like these.

His emphasis was love. But Rehman Baba’s message is anathema to the Taliban which objected to women visiting his shrine in Peshawar.

Recently, the Taliban bombed the shrine, in a strike at his teachings. As also the growing belief that Sufism is a bulwark against Islamist radicalism.

Can Sufi thought counter Islamism? The first institution to urge the United States to have a dialogue with Muslim groups opposed to extremism was the think-tank RAND Corporation. In a 2007 report titled ‘Building moderate Muslim networks’, it described Sufis as moderate traditionalists “open to change and potential allies against violence’’. It recommended support for Sufism as an “open, intellectual interpretation of Islam”. Later, the suggestion would be backed by Pennsylvania State University professor of humanities Philip Jenkins who said that Sufis, “by all logic should be a critical ally against extremism’’.

In a recently published article, Jenkins wrote, “Sufis are the power that has made Islam the world’s second-largest religion, with perhaps 1.2 billion adherents... 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.”

Writer William Dalrymple agrees in part with Jenkins but says the West “isn’t sophisticated enough in its understanding of Islam to comprehend how important Sufism is as a home-grown resistance movement to radical, political Islam”. He says there is an ongoing war in South Asia between traditional Islam, which is syncretic, plural and generally non-political, and the “imported Wahhabi strains of Islam’’.

Dalrymple adds, “Sufism is a home-grown resistance movement against radicalism, but the question is how or whether one should utilize this. It isn’t something that can be harnessed but it’s definitely part of the equation.’’

But rather than analyze Sufism, some scholars want the West first to introspect. “Let’s not forget that Americans brought extremism to the region to fight the USSR,’’ says Sufi scholar Najamul Hassan Chishti. He says Sufis resent the carpet bombings in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories, just as much as other Muslims and liberal thinkers of any faith. “They believe love and not violence is the solution. Sufis have a role to play as their emphasis on peace isn’t surrender to oppression but the true spirit of Islam.’’

However, many points out those non-Sufi groups, notably the Deobandis, have taken a resolute stand against terrorism in India. Javed Anand, general secretary of Muslims for Secular Democracy and editor of Communalism Combat, says, it is “naïve to see Sufism as an antidote to radicals; (it’s) prompted by the West's search for a quick-fix solution’’.

He adds, “With due respect, it’s the non-Sufis, like the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, who have spearheaded the year-long campaign against terror in the name of Islam.”

[Picture: A sampler volume of the classic Rahman Baba poems. Photo from http://www.rahmanbaba-poetry.com/rahmanbaba.htm/].