sufis

Sufi Islam
The term "Sufi" derives from three Arabic letters sa, wa and fa. There have been many opinions on the reason for its origin from sa wa fa. The most frequently cited in Western dictionnaries suggests the Arabic word "suf" meaning "wool" in the sense of "cloak", referring to the simple cloaks the original Sufis wore. Some initiates are given a specially designed, colored wool vest which is symbolic of the woolen robes of poverty worn by ancient dervishes, and signifies the loving commitment of the dervish to serve humanity. The Sufis use letters of words to express hidden meanings, and so the word could also be understood as "enlightenment". According to some the word is derived from safa which means purity. According to another view it is derived from the Arabic verb safwe which means "those who are selected" - a meaning quoted frequently in Sufi literature.

The problem with understanding Sufism, is thus illustrated by the diversity of possible derivations of the word itself. There are many different Sufi movements, and many dimensions of Sufism. Although frequently characterized as the mystical component of Islam, there are also "Folklorist" Sufis, and the "Traditional" Sufis.

Sufis are "movements", within, and in a few extreme cases outside of mainstream Islam. Sufis in general, are complex, and cover many different "stripes" of Islam. Sufism started out as a Shia movement, but over the past several hundred years, has almost disappeared from Shia Islam, and is now, mainly a Sunni movement. Hanbalis, Shafis, Malikis and Hanafis can all belong to different Sufi "tariqas" or "brotherhoods, as they are called. In fact, the Islamic brotherhood in Egypt, and Al Qaeda, are both Sufi based movements.

The Traditional Sufis, are actually people like the Wahhabiyyah and Al Qaeda, who eschew that type of thing as apostasy, and instead, insist that Sufism is all an Internal (internal to an individual) movement/spiritualism, that should never adopt external/folkloric elements, like the Dervishes, etc.

Sufi Brotherhoods
Sufism is a movement of organized brotherhoods, who are grouped around a spiritual leader or sheik. There are no Islamic states which regard themselves as officially Sufi. Sufism is characterized by the veneration of local saints and by brotherhoods that practice their own rituals. Sufis organize themselves into "orders" or groups, called Tariqas. These groups are headed by a leader called a Shaykh who is considered the most spiritual man with the most Taqwa among them.

These orders emerged in the Middle East in the twelfth century in connection with the development of Sufism, a mystical current reacting to the strongly legalistic orientation of orthodox Islam. The orders first came to Sudan in the sixteenth century and became significant in the eighteenth. Sufism seeks for its adherents a closer personal relationship with God through special spiritual disciplines. The exercises (dhikr) include reciting prayers and passages of the Quran and repeating the names, or attributes, of God while performing physical movements according to the formula established by the founder of the particular order. Singing and dancing may be introduced. The outcome of an exercise, which lasts much longer than the usual daily prayer, is often a state of ecstatic abandon.

A mystical or devotional way (sing., tariqa; pl., turuq) is the basis for the formation of particular orders, each of which is also called a tariqa. The specialists in religious law and learning initially looked askance at Sufism and the Sufi orders, but the leaders of Sufi orders in Sudan have won acceptance by acknowledging the significance of the sharia and not claiming that Sufism replaces it.

The principal turuq vary considerably in their practice and internal organization. Some orders are tightly organized in hierarchical fashion; others have allowed their local branches considerable autonomy. Some are restricted to that country; others are widespread in Africa or the Middle East. Several turuq, for all practical purposes independent, are offshoots of older orders and were established by men who altered in major or minor ways the tariqa of the orders to which they had formerly been attached.

The four main Sufi orders are the Chishtiyya, the Naqshbandiyya, the Qadiriyya [Quaddiri] and the Mujaddiyya. Other orders include the Mevlevi, Bektashi, Halveti, Jerrahi, Nimatalahi, Rufi, and Noori. The Mawlawis, the whirling dervishes, are famous for their dancing ritual, an organized variation of earlier practices which were confined to music and poetry.

Three Sufi orders are prominent: the Naqshbandiya founded in Bokhara, the Qadiriya founded in Baghdad, and the Cheshtiya located at Chesht-i-Sharif east of Herat.

Among the Naqshbani, Ahmad al Faruqi Kabuli, born north of Kabul, acquired renown for his teachings in India during the reign of the Moghul Emperor Akbar in the sixteenth century. Sometime during the nineteenth century members of this family moved back to Kabul where they established a madrassa and a khanaqah in Shor Bazar which became a center of religious and political influence.

The Cheshtiya order was founded by Mawdid al-Cheshti who was born in the twelfth century and later taught in India. The Cheshtiya brotherhood, concentrated in the Hari Rud valley around Obe, Karukh and Chehst-i-Sharif, is very strong locally and maintains madrasas with fine libraries. Traditionally the Cheshtiya have kept aloof from politics, although they were effectively active during the resistance within their own organizations and in their own areas.

Many Iraqi Sunni Kurds belong to Sufi orders, of which the Qadiri and Naqshbandi are the largest. Both orders have followers across the Middle East, Central, and South Asia. A Qadiri Sufi shrine in Baghdad attracts annual transnational pilgrimages. While Sufi Islam has broad acceptance in Iraqi society, Sufism has frequently been viewed by orthodox Sunni Muslim theologians with some degree of suspicion because of its strong mystical components. Shia Muslims tend to be hostile towards Sufism because they believe it is heretical. Sufi orders serve to both strengthen and divide Kurdish society. Kurds of the same order feel a common bond, regardless of tribe. There is, however, tension between rival orders. Jalal Talabani, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), follows the Qadiri order. The Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), and the influential Barzani family are Naqshbandi Sufis.

The Tijaniyah (Tijaniyya) Order, founded in Morocco by Ahmad at-Tijani in 1781, extended the borders of Islam toward Senegal and Nigeria, and their representatives founded large kingdoms in West Africa. The Tijaniyah Order is strongly associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, which began in Egypt in the late 1920s and later spread throughout the Arab world. Hasan al-Banna, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 in Egypt, called for radical measures to bring about a return of Islamic government. The goal of the Muslim Brotherhood was the establishment of an Islamic state based on Shariah. It transcended the narrower sectarianism of the more traditional political parties. Moreover, the Brotherhood's superior organization made it a political force far stronger than its numbers might suggest. Many of the methods which made Sufism a succesfull occult underground helped the Muslim Brotherhood function effectively.

After World War II, the Muslim Brotherhood acquired a reputation as a radical group prepared to use violence to achieve its religious goals. The group was implicated in several assassinations, including the murder of one prime minister. The Brotherhood had contacts with the Free Officers in Egypt before the 1952 Revolution and supported most of their initial policies. The Brotherhood, however, soon came into conflict with Nasser. The government accused the Brotherhood of complicity in an alleged 1954 plot to assassinate the president and imprisoned many of the group's leaders. In the 1940s and early 1950s, the Muslim Brotherhood had appealed primarily to urban civil servants and white- and blue-collar workers. After the early 1970s, the Islamic revival attracted followers from a broad spectrum of social classes. In the 1970s, Anwar as Sadat amnestied the leaders and permitted them to resume some of their activities. But by that time, the Brotherhood was divided into at least three factions. The more militant faction was committed to a policy of political opposition to the government. A second faction advocated peaceful withdrawal from society and the creation, to the extent possible, of a separate, parallel society based upon Islamic values and law. The dominant moderate group advocated cooperation with the regime.

Bayat ("taking hand") is sanctioned by "Verily, those who give thee their allegiance, they give it but to Allah Himself" Quran 48:10. It is the initiation ceremony specific to many Sufi Orders. The Prophet Muhammad established this ceremony when he allowed his trusted companions to take his hand and commit themselves to vastly increase their love and loyalty to Allah and the Messenger: this is directly referred to in the Qur'an. Most Sufi Orders still practices some form of this sacred ceremony as a sacramental reenactment of the initiation offered by Prophet Muhammad to his companions. During the "taking hand" ceremony, the new dervish receives the blessings of the lineage, and a promise of spiritual protection along their life's journey.

Members of al-Qaeda take bayat [an oath of allegiance] to their sheik, Bin Laden, as an act of initiation. Al-Qaeda is a secret society without acclamation or public bayat to him. Bayat, the Arabic word for an oath of loyalty, means religious fealty or the submission more than personal allegiance. It means the link between the one making bayat, the shaykh and Prophet Muhammad (saws) is unbroken. This makes a Sufi connection possible during the solemn moment of taking bayat (pact) with the shaykh, who is the link in the chain - it connects to the chain and you become a recipient of the light of Muhammad (saws). Bayat is the ritual of accepting the shaykh as guide and coming under the protection of the lineage of the order. The number of actual members pledging bayat is unknown, but al-Qaida is said to have trained as many as 5000 militants in camps in Afghanistan and perhaps Indonesia.

Sufi Mysticism
Because of Islam's austere rational and intellectual qualities, many people have felt drawn toward the more emotional and personal ways of knowing God practiced by mystical Islam, or Sufism. Found in many parts of the Muslim world, Sufism endeavored to produce a personal experience of the divine through mystic and ascetic discipline.

Sufi adherents gathered into brotherhoods, and Sufi cults became extremely popular, particularly in rural areas. Sufi brotherhoods exercised great influence and ultimately played an important part in the religious revival that swept through North Africa during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Sufi followers understand Islam in a mystic way. Sufi doesn't differ from Islam in the theological point of view, to use a Western term. The Sufi interpretation is a different way to look at Islam. Ardor is the medium to get in touch with God. Sufi followers use a variety of techniques to move toward God, like singing, circular dances, etc.

The fundamental nature of Sufi is that the person who has chosen this path can reach an individual contact with God. Sufi followers have a teacher who acts as an intermediary between God and the person. The teacher gives the precepts according to which people should behave. Usually Sufi followers respect these rules. A wali Allah is a Sufi who has reached the end of the Journey to Allah.

Sufism has come to mean those who are interested in finding a way or practice toward inner awakening and enlightenment. This movement developed as a protest against corrupt rulers who did not embody Islam and against the legalism and formalism of worship which paid more attention to the form rather than content of the faith. Many of the sufis became ascetics, began to gather disciples around themselves and developed into religious orders, known as dervishers. Others forsook the orders and became mendicants, traveling around the country side, living off the charity of others. Many sufis were outstanding men of saintly stature. Not all sufis were accepted by the more conservative elements of Islam due to their unorthodox habits and beliefs. Sufi influence has grown over the centuries and today there are literally hundreds of mystic orders with millions of adherents. They are most prevalent in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Arabia.

Islam’s mystical tradition emphasizes the direct knowledge, personal experience, and spiritual sovereignty of God, is at odds with the official Sunni establishment and its dedication to enforcing the legal and political sovereignty of Allah. Sufism, which makes use of paradigms and concepts derived from Greek, Hindu, and other non-Islamic sources, is generally less concerned with reinforcing and defending religious boundaries. The Sufi doctrine of “the unity of being,” moreover, has inclined Sufis to emphasize interiority and the oneness of humanity, often at the expense of militant Islam’s insistence on the conformity of the external world of state and society to Shari‘a.

To the Sufi, perhaps the greatest absurdity in life is the way in which people strive for things — such as knowledge — without the basic equipment for acquiring them. They have assumed that all they need is “two eyes and a mouth,” as Nasrudin says. In Sufism, a person cannot learn until he is in a state in which he can perceive what he is learning, and what it means ... This is why Sufis do not speak about profound things to people who are not prepared to cultivate the power of learning—something which can only be taught by a teacher to someone who is sufficiently enlightened to say: “Teach me how to learn.” There is a Sufi saying: “Ignorance is pride, and pride is ignorance. The man who says ‘I don’t have to be taught how to learn’ is proud and ignorant.”

Sufi Syncretism - Folklorist Sufis
Sufism follows the basic tenets of Islam but does not follow all of the orthodox practices of Sunni or Shi'ah Islam. In many Muslim areas, a mystical version of Hanafi Sunnism provided the means by which pagan and Christian practices were accommodated within Islam. Sufism centers on orders or brotherhoods that follow charismatic religious leaders.

There is a distinction between official and folk religion. Official religion stresses religious texts, the sharia (Islamic law), the literal interpretation of religious teachings, and worship at mosques. Folk religion, reflecting Arabic and Kurdish nomadic heritages, emphasizes sacred forces, the symbolic interpretation of texts, and worship at shrines. Folk religion continues to flourish in rural areas. Sufi orders, like folk religion, focus on the allegorical interpretation of texts and have historically been organized around a pious founder or saint.

The Folklorist Sufis, have been under attack, and discriminated against, for centuries. The Folklorists Sufis, have incorporated "un-Islamic" beliefs into their practices, such as celebrating the Birthday of Mohammed, visiting the shrines of "Islamic saints", dancing during prayer (the whirling dervishes), etc.

The followers of Salafist Islam, such as Wahhabis, oppose all practices not sanctioned by the Koran. Wahabbism is named after Abdul Wahab, a religious thinker who two centuries earlier had fought the influence of Sufism in Sunni Islam. Wahhabis look at Sufi Islam as a deviation from the original Islamic rules. This view of Islam rejects "magical rituals," pilgrimages to saint shrines, or recitations of the Koran in cemeteries -- all activities that had become commonplace among the Sufi orders. Wahhabis deny the role of the teacher, which for the Sufi is very important. They also deny the cult of the saints and pilgrimages to the saint shrines that are widespread among the followers of Sufi Islam. The inner link with God, typical for the Sufi followers, is denied by the Wahhabis. Wahhabis follow the old concept of jihad, meaning the holy war to convert the infidels. The Sufis have another interpretation of jihad. They see it not as a war against the infidels, but as a war that a Muslim has to fight against his own defects to try to reach perfection.

Islam was introduced into Chechnya over a period of centuries, gaining a number of converts by the 15th and 16th centuries but not taking firm root until well into the 18th and mid-19th centuries. The Chechens were converted to the Sunni branch of Islam, with particular emphasis on its mystic Sufi form. The Chechens practice the mystical version of Islam known as Sufism. This wins the Chechens little sympathy from the Sunni and Shi'a establishments in most Muslim states. The prevalent form of Islam as practiced in the north Caucasus is Nakshbandi Sufism, which is not favored in Saudi Arabia -- which is a Wahhabi regime -- and is not favored in Shi'a Iran, either. The Chechens, through a combination of Islam which is popular in their homeland, combined with economic issues, have dropped below the level of Islamic solidarity that one might expect from other Islamic countries. Zikr, which means "remembrance of God," is the central ritual practice of most Caucasian Sufi orders. This mystical ceremony, designed to lead participants into an ecstatic union with God, involves the group repetition of a special prayer.

Albania is the world center of the Bektashi school (a particularly liberal form of Shi'a Sufism), which moved from Turkey to Albania in 1925 after the revolution of Ataturk. Bektashis are concentrated mainly in central and southern regions of the country and claim that 45 percent of the country's Muslims belong to their school.

Alawiya is an underground movement that appeared in the third century on the Hijri calendar. The group followers do prayers different from that of Muslims and allow many practices prohibited under Islam. Turkish Alawiya Muslims’ number vary from 5 to 25 million, mostly inhabited in impoverished central areas of the country. The situation of the Shadhiliya/'Alawiya Sufi order of Sanaa is a typical case of the problems facing Sufi orders in Yemen, where covert but commanding devotion to the saints and Sufi shaykhs of Yemen can still be found.

The vast majority of Muslims in Chad are adherents of a moderate branch of Sufism known locally as Tidjani, which originated in 1727 under Sheik Ahmat Tidjani in what is now Morocco and Algeria. Tidjani Islam, as practiced in the country, incorporates some local African religious elements. Of the total population, 54 percent are Muslim, approximately one-third are Christian, and the remainder practice traditional indigenous religions or no religion at all. Most northerners practice Islam and most southerners practice Christianity or a traditional indigenous religion.

Mouridism is one of four Sufi movements in Senegal, and one of the most distinctive aspects of contemporary Senegalese social life. Sheikh Amadou Bamba (1853-1927), the spiritual leader of four million Muslims in Senegal and thousands more around the globe, was a Sufi who resisted French colonial oppression through pacifism. The influential Senegalese Sufi movement called the Mouride Way is grounded in his teachings about the dignity and sanctity of work. The abundant images of Bamba convey the saint's blessings to his followers.

The Black Muslim Movement (BMM) is a largely black urban movement in the US that has many of the attributes of a syncretic Sufi movement. One driving force was a rejection of Christianity as the religion of the historically oppressing white race.

The Moorish Science Temple of America was organized in 1913 in Newark, New Jersey by Timothy Drew. H his followers believed he had been ordained Prophet Noble Drew Ali by Allah. Although the truth is difficult to know, He is reported to have been born in North Carolina in 1886 the son of a Moroccan Muslim father and a Native American mother. It is said that at age sixteen Drew began his wanderings as a circus magician, which eventually took him to Egypt where he learned about Islam. Drew advocated a "return" to Islam, teaching was that blacks were of Moorish, and thus Muslim, origins. His followers refused to fight in World War I. In 1940 and FBI investigation was conducted to determine if the Moorish Science Temple of America was committing subversive activities by adhering to and spreading Japanese propaganda. The investigation failed to substantiate that members were pro-Japanese in their attitude. The Temple was investigated in 1953 for violation of the Selective Service Act of 1948 and sedition. In September of 1953, the Department of Justice, concluded that prosecution for violation of the Selective Service Act was not warranted.

The Nation of Islam was started by Wallace Fard, who built the first temple in Detroit. Fard was an immigrant from New Zealand, born to Pakistani parents. He had joined Noble Drew Ali's Moorish Science Temple in the late 1920s, and gradually made his way to the group's leadership when Drew died under obscure circumstances in 1929.

Elijah Muhammad (born Elijah Poole) established a second temple in Chicago and later supervised the creation of temples in most large cities with significant black populations. Fard disappeared in 1931, and Elijah Muhammad assumed the leadership of The Lost Found Nation of Islam - known in the news media as the “Black Muslims”. They taught that blacks were racially superior to whites and that a racial war is inevitable. The charismatic Malcolm X was perhaps their most famous spokesperson; he played an important role in reversing the BMM's anti-white beliefs. In its earlier years, the movement deviated significantly from traditional Islamic beliefs (particularly over matters of racial tolerance and the status of the BMM leaders as prophets).

After the death of Elijah Muhammad in 1975, there were unsuccessful attempts to shed the idiosyncratic elements of belief by Wallace Muhammad, Elijah's seventh (legitimate) child, who formed the Muslim American Society. He shed the Nation's core beliefs that Elijah Muhammad was a divine messenger and that W. Fard Muhammad, was God incarnate. Mainstream Sunni Islam teaches that the prophet Muhammad was God's final messenger, and rejects the idea of human divinity. The Nation of Islam was opened to those of the white race and members were encouraged to participate in the civic and political life of the country. The Nation of Islam became the World Community of Islam in the west and then the American Muslim Mission.

Minister Louis Farrakhan, long regarded as a race-baiter and Jew-hater, heads spin-off movement from the old Nation of that continued espousing the movements idiosynratic views. Under the leadership of minister Louis Farrakhan a group of Blacks broke with the American Muslim Mission and returned to the original teaching and ideals of Elijah Muhammad and readopted the old name, Nation of Islam. Black Muslims are to live by a strict ethical code that excludes alcohol, drugs, tobacco, sports, movies, and cosmetics. Pork is not to be eaten. Orthodox Islam rejects Nation of Islam as heretical because its doctrines are contrary to the Islamic Qur'an.

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