Egypt’s Sufis see post-Mubarak Islamist threat, consider launching own movement
Down the narrow alleyways of Cairo’s Sayidda Zeinab neighbourhood, 100 men sway their heads and clap in rhythm as they invoke God’s name. “O how you have spread benevolence,” chant the men, some dressed in ankle-length galabeya robes, to celebrate the birth of Fatima al-Zahraa, the daughter of the Prophet Mohammed.
The men are followers of the centuries-old Azaimiya Sufi order who seek to come closer to God through mystical rites. Some of the country’s estimated 15 million Sufis say their traditions are now threatened by various groups of Islamists elbowing for influence after the overthrow of Egypt’s veteran leader Hosni Mubarak. Some Islamists, such as the ultra-conservative Salafists, see Sufi practices such as the veneration of shrines as heresy.
So as Sufis seek to defend traditions dating back centuries, what began as a loose religious identity could be gelling, gradually, into a political movement.
Alaa Abul Azaim, sheikh of the Azaimiya Sufi order, says moves by Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi groups to enter formal politics endanger religious tolerance and oblige Sufis to do the same. “If the Salafists or Muslim Brotherhood rise to power, they could well cancel the Sufi sheikhdom, so there has to be a party for Sufis,” he said.
“If the Sufis stood side by side, they could be an important voting bloc … but their political and organisational power is less than their numerical power,” said political analyst Nabil Abdel Fattah.
Read the full story by Shaimaa Fayed and Abdel Rahman Youssef here.
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Egyptian army must stop shrine vandals-religious affairs ministry
Egypt’s religious affairs ministry has called on security forces to strike with “a hand of steel” to stop the vandalism of Sufi shrines targeted in attacks blamed on ultra-orthodox Muslims. An increase in attacks on shrines in Egypt is fuelling concern about the role that Islamists will play after the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak, who suppressed Islamist groups that he saw as a threat to his rule.
Scores of shrines have disappeared or were burnt down on the outskirts of Cairo weeks after Mubarak was toppled from power. The attacks have awoken old tensions between Sufis, followers of a mystical Islamic tradition to whom shrines are an important part of religious practice, and ultra-conservative Salafists, who see them as idolatrous.
“It (the vandalism) violates the spirit of the Islamic sharia and whoever does this is corrupting the land and seeking to incite chaos and strife in the nation and to shake national security and its stability,” reported official state news agency MENA, citing a ministry statement on Wednesday. According to Egypt’s penal code, people who violate the sanctity of graves or destroy property considered holy could be jailed for up to five years and fined.
Established Salafist groups in Egypt have denied any link to the attacks. Witnesses have attributed them to Salafist youths apparently acting independently. Some accuse the media of exploiting a handful of cases to scare-monger — playing on fears of Islamists suppressed by Mubarak to strengthen the case of conservatives seeking a return to the authoritarian ways of his regime.
via Egypt army must stop shrine vandals-ministry – AlertNet.
Hardline Islamist campaign against Egyptian Sufi shrines focus fears
Wielding crowbars and sledgehammers, two dozen Islamists arrived at the Sidi Abdel Rahman shrine in the middle of the night aiming to smash it to pieces. Word spread quickly through the narrow, dirt roads of the poor Egyptian town of Qalyoub. Within minutes, the group were surrounded and attacked by residents who rallied to defend the site revered by their families for generations.
“They say the shrine is haram (something forbidden in Islam), but what they are doing is haram,” said Hussein Ahmed, 58, describing the shrine attackers as Sunni fanatics, at least two of whom witnesses said were then badly beaten.
Acts of hardline vigilantism in Egypt are fuelling debate and concern about the role Islamists will play after the demise of President Hosni Mubarak, who suppressed Islamist groups which he saw as a threat to his rule. Seeking to ease concerns among moderate Egyptian Muslims, secularists and the Christian minority, the ruling military council has said it will not allow Egypt to turn into an Iran-style theocracy.
The gang of bearded youths did limited damage to the Sidi Abdel Rahman shrine. The locals who thwarted their attack blame a break down in state control for allowing them to even try to impose their ideas on how Islam should be practiced. They say five other shrines have disappeared in Qalyoub on the northern outskirts of Cairo in the weeks since Mubarak was toppled from power, part of what Egyptian media has declared a campaign by ultra-orthodox Salafists.
The head of al-Azhar, Egypt’s most prestigious seat of Islamic learning, has called for efforts to confront hardline doctrine. “We’ll be up to our knees in blood,” Sheikh Ahmed El-Tayyib warned, as quoted by Shorouk newspaper.
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Taliban suicide blasts at Sufi shrine in Pakistan kill 41
Two Taliban suicide bombers caused carnage on Sunday at a Sufi shrine in Dera Ghazi Khan in eastern Pakistan, killing at least 41 people and wounding scores in the latest bloody attack on minority religious groups. Police said some 65 people were wounded. They said the attackers struck during an annual ceremony for the Sufi saint to whom the shrine is dedicated.
“I was just a few yards away from the place where the blast happened,” said witness Faisal Iqbal. “People started running outside the shrine. Women and children were crying and screaming. It was like hell.”
Taliban militants, who follow an austere interpretation of Sunni Islam, condemn other interpretations of Islam as heretical and have launched repeated attacks on the country’s Shi’ite, Sufi and Christian minorities. They claimed responsibility for Sunday’s suicide bombings.
“Our men carried out these attacks and we will carry out more in retaliation for government operations against our people in the northwest,” Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.
Last October, a bomb blast at a Sufi shrine in another eastern city, Pak Pattan, killed six people. In July, 42 people were killed in a bomb attack in Pakistan’s most important Sufi shrine, in Lahore, the capital of eastern Punjab province. Many analysts say the attacks are motivated by more than religious hatred, and that militant groups hope by inflaming sectarian tensions they can further destabilise Pakistan and weaken the government’s tenuous grip on the country.
By Asim Tanveer in Multan, Pakistan
I wonder why not a single Pakistani is protesting against abhorrent violence like this.
Banned Islamists say time for change in Morocco
The banned Islamist group Justice and Charity, believed to be Morocco’s biggest opposition force, has said “autocracy” will be swept away unless the country pursues deep democratic reform.
The group of Sufi inspiration is believed to have 200,000 members, most of whom are university students, and is active mainly in the poor districts of some cities. Banned from politics, its avowed aim is to achieve a peaceful transition to a pluralist political system inspired by Islam.
In a statement posted on its website late on Sunday, Justice and Charity said the unrest in Egypt and Tunisia left “no place today for distortions … and empty, false promises… The gap between the ruler and the ruled has widened and confidence is lost … The solution is either a deep and urgent democratic reform that ends autocracy and responds to the needs and demands of the people, or the people take the initiative and (it) erupt peacefully … to sweep autocracy away.”
A group on social networking website Facebook has gathered hundreds of followers for a Feb. 20 protest meant to restore “the dignity of the Moroccan people and (press) for democratic and constitutional reform and the dissolution of parliament”.
“The Jury is Out”: WikiLeaks shows U.S. trying to understand Islam in Turkey
The WikiLeaks documents from the U.S. embassy in Ankara show several attempts by American diplomats to understand the role of Islam and the Islamic world in the political stand of the governing AK Party of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan. Their efforts can be summarised in a subtitle of a cable in 2007 purporting to show “the truth behind the AKP’s “secret Islamic agenda.” It said simply: The Jury is Out.”
Following are some interesting excerpts, with links to the full documents:
20 Jan 2010 — WHAT LIES BENEATH ANKARA’S NEW FOREIGN POLICY
¶1. (C) There is much talk in chanceries and in the international media these days about Turkey’s new, highly activist foreign policy … The ruling AKP foreign policy is driven by both a desire to be more independently activist, and by a more Islamic orientation…
¶2. (C) Does all this mean that the country is becoming more focused on the Islamist world and its Muslim tradition in its foreign policy? Absolutely. Does it mean that it is “abandoning” or wants to abandon its traditional Western orientation and willingness to cooperate with us? Absolutely not. At the end of the day we will have to live with a Turkey whose population is propelling much of what we see … Turkey will remain a complicated blend of world class “Western” institutions, competencies, and orientation, and Middle Eastern culture and religion.
¶9. (C) Various factors explain the shifts we see in Turkish foreign policy beyond the personal views of the AKP leadership:
In a small way, this reminds me of both Voltaire’s Letters on The English, and Tocqueville’s America. This should have never been classified information.
Beard guide and song ban among Salafist books barred in Algeria
(Photo: Customs officers inspect books purchased at an Islamic book fair in Algiers, searching for Salafist books, October 29, 2010/Zohra Bensemra)
Concerned by the growing influence of the ultra-conservative Salafist branch of Islam, Algeria has this year been cracking down on the import and distribution of Salafist literature. Salafist publications, most printed in Saudi Arabia, are still available in some specialist bookstores. See our feature on this crackdown here.
Following is a selection of titles on sale in a bookshop in Rouiba, an eastern suburb of the Algerian capital.
* “Islamic Songs, a bid’a“ by Sheikh Abdel Aziz Ibn Nada El Otaibi.
This book explains that singing is illicit even when the song is religious. The book aims also to counter the Sufi school of Islam, which does not object to most forms of music.
* “How to answer El Albani’s opponents” by Sheikh Mekbel Ibn Hadi El Wadi’i.
from Pakistan: Now or Never?:
Attacking Sufi shrines in Pakistan
Amil Khan has a post up at Abu Muqawama about last week's bombing at a Sufi shrine in Karachi and its implications for intra-Sunni conflict between Deobandi Taliban militants and people of the majority Barelvi sect:
"There are all sorts of studies written by people much cleverer than me that will tell you violence in this type of conflict aims to do a lot more than just kill its immediate victims. In Pakistan, right now, it also aims to push people into ideological camps (for or against) so that the perpetrators can claim they defend a constituency and create an ideological cover for their actions. In that sense, the attacks were aimed at forcing people to think about the 'who is Muslim and who is not' argument." he writes.
"I would add just raising this argument where once it wouldn't be entertained at all is an achievement for extremists because, well.. if you are arguing about whether Muslims are really Muslims, whether people agree or not, you have already radicalised on the sly the discourse concerning non-Muslims, or Shia."
There's a troublesome pattern here. In May, militants killed more than 80 people from the minority Ahmadi sect in Lahore.
In September, Interior Minister Rehman Malik accused militants of trying to create a Sunni-Shi'ite rift after bomb attacks on Shi'ite rallies in the cities of Lahore and Quetta.
And now the Karachi attack - the latest attack on Sufis whose mystical faith is condemned by hardline militants seeking a return to what they see as a purer form of Islam.
At a superficial level, the wave of bombings and gun attacks which have hit Pakistan over the last few years can be seen as an attempt to sow chaos - revenge for the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, and for Pakistan Army operations against militants in its own tribal areas.
@Rex
“But one thing I must say, it does not matter where you were educated, try to make less use of rude words in your english and avoid personal attacks”
Look who’s saying this. You call people by all names in the rudest forms as fools, war mongers, hopeless, confused and what not. Why did you add comments on my education above? Is it some form of sweet wording or is that not a personal attack? And now when someone calls you a dumb head for misinterpreting an abbreviation then your ego is hurt so much. Calm down and come down.
“no one in the world would think of using AQ for an entity which is not an entity but an ideology!”
Well then how come G-W and KP (or anyone else) did not misinterpret the abbreviation just like you? Are you proposing that you represent the whole world?
By the way it is much easier to type ‘@777′ than ‘@three 7′ but I am sure there is nothing personal in it…correct?
Tahir ul-Qadri and the difficulty of reporting on fatwas
It never was and may never be easy to report about fatwas for a world audience. This point was driven home once again today when a prominent Islamic scholar presented to the media his new 600-page fatwa against terrorism and suicide bombing. Muhammad Tahir ul-Qadri is a Pakistani-born Sufi scholar whose youth workshops fostering moderation and understanding in Britain had already caught our attention. His effort to knock down any and every argument in favour of violence is certainly welcome. But the back story to this event is so complicated that it’s hard to report on the fatwa without simply ignoring many important parts of this back story.
Part of the problem was the PR drumroll leading up to ul-Qadri’s news conference. Minhaj-ul-Quran, his international network to spread his Sufi teachings, touted this fatwa in an email to journalists a week ago as a unique event “because at no time in history has such an extensively researched and evidenced work been presented by such a prominent Islamic authority.” Hype like this usually prompts journalists to throw an invitation straight into the trash can.
Two days later, on February 25, the pitch was changed to present this document as “the first ever fatwa against terrorism which declares terrorists as disbelievers.” Now, that’s more likely to grab a busy journalist’s attention. But once it has accomplished that, any hack with any experience covering Islam finds two big problems with this description.
First, it plays on a widely-held (and sometimes willful) misperception that Muslim leaders have not spoken out against Islamist violence. Large numbers of Muslim leaders have denounced violence, suicide bombs, 9/11, 7/7 and many other bloody attacks by Islamist radicals (check out a long partial list here). But since there is no real hierarchy in Islam, non-Muslims don’t know who has the authority to speak out and Muslims often challenge the authority of those who do. Many of these statements end up unreported, like the trees nobody hears falling in the forest. But if a news story is written with the “first ever” tag in the lead, it gives the false impression that no other Muslim leader has ever done anything similiar before.
Second, the clause “which declares terrorists as disbelievers” is difficult terrain. It’s hard for a journalist to verify that this is the first such fatwa as no central directory of such edicts worldwide exists. Moreover, who has the authority in Islam to declare someone a non-Muslim? Al-Qaeda has been criticised for declaring its enemies non-Muslims (an act known as takfir) and either killing them or urging other Muslims to kill them.
In fact, an important group of mainstream Muslim scholars got together in 2004 to issue the Amman Message that denounces the use of takfir. On the website of the Amman Message is a list of scholars endorsing it. Among those listed under Pakistan is none other than al-Qadri…
Another problem is that ul-Qadri issued an earlier, 150-page Urdu version of his fatwa last December and got a tepid reception — Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rehman Malik welcomed it as “a positive development” and Pakistani media – see The News here — seem to have given it only short routine coverage. Maybe they’re suffering from a fatwa overload there.
great work by Dr. Tahir-ul-Qadri. we proud of Al-Qadri.
Algeria also opts for “Sufi card” to fight Islamist extremism
FaithWorld recently ran a post about Pakistan considering playing the “Sufi card” in its campaign against Islamist militants. The idea is that promoting this mystical and tolerant school of Islam could counteract the influence of more radical readings of the faith. It looks like they’re not the only ones considering this:
After using police raids, arrests and gun battles in its fight against Islamist insurgents, Algeria is now deploying a new, more subtle weapon: a branch of Islam associated with contemplation, not combat.
The government of this North African oil and gas producer is promoting Sufism, an Islamic movement that it sees as a gentler alternative to the ultra-conservative Salafism espoused by many of the militants behind Algeria’s insurgency.
The authorities have created a television and radio station to promote Sufism and the “zaouias” or religious confraternities that preach and practise it, in addition to regular appearances by Sufi sheikhs on other stations. All are tightly controlled by the state.
Neighbouring Morocco is taking a different approach, opting to reinforce the authority of state-appointed imams in the hope this will cut off support for jihadism.
What do you think? Do state-supported campaigns to promote certain types of Islam are an effective way to counter militancy?
The idea of supporting Sufism to combat “jihadism”, which is usually anti-western and pro-Qutbist in nature, is one of the more intelligent ideas which Islamic regimes are now advocating after Saudia Arabia’s efforts to return to the Salafism and Wahabist currents which have destroyed the Ummah and broken it into 72 warring sects opposed to each other: whereas Sufism seeks the Unity which the Elect know is the “essence” or “Fruit” of the Tree of Life.
To overcome the demons of ignorance it is far more perplexing to the supporters of hatred and violence to deal with the reality of the Sufis than conventional tools of repression and civil authority and the police; thus we are now seeing the manifestation of the true jihad that the Apostle Muhammed advocated: the one within.
It is for this reason that he said; to wit;
“The ink of the Learned is holier than the
blood of the Martyr”.
The advent of Misih ad-Dajjal Osama bin Laden has not been recognized in Islam due to the destruction of the schools of Sufism and their adherents: now Islam sees that to survive it is indded the Sufus and the 4 Major Orders who are that of the People of Salvation for the Ummah.
Could the Voice of Reason by those like Sayed Hisham Kabbani and others be making itself heard?
Perhaps the real jihad against the ego and it’s attendent blindness and greed can now begin; as we are at the Last Day of which Muhammed and Jesus both spoke; the 2 Brothers of the Truth of Allah that restored the relationship Ishmael and Issac were to have enjoyed and thus healed the heart of Abraham; and it is this which will unite the Believers at the End.
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Resident FaithWorld Expert
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