The real Islam (like Sahaja Yoga) — one mystical, the other orthodox

[Guest guest]

THE REAL ISLAM

By William Dalrymple

 

A tale of two opposing visions of Islamic afterlife—one mystical,

the other orthodox—in eternal conflict

 

 

From the very beginning of Sufism, music, dance, poetry and

meditation have been seen as crucial spiritual strides on the path

of love, an invaluable aid toward attaining unity with God—true

paradise. Music, in particular, enables devotees to focus their

whole being on the divine so intensely that the soul is both

destroyed and resurrected. At Sufi shrines, devotees are lifted by

the music into a state of spiritual ecstasy.

 

Yet these heterodox methods of worship have divided Sufis from many

of their Muslim brethren. Throughout Islamic history, more

puritanical Muslims have claimed that Sufi practices were infections

from Christianity and Hinduism, quite alien to the original

principles of Islam. As Najaf Haider, professor of medieval history

at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, tells it, such

conflicts were inevitable: " In orthodox Islam the object of creation

is the worship of God; God is the master and the devotee is the

slave. The Sufis argue that God should be worshipped not because he

has commanded us to but because he's such a lovable being. The

cornerstone of Sufi ideology is love, and all traditions are

tolerated because anyone is capable of expressing love for God. "

 

The most formidable of all the anti-Sufi movements was Wahhabism

from Arabia, its followers the progenitors of modern Islamic

fundamentalists, who on coming to power in the early 19th century

destroyed all the Sufi and Shi'a shrines in Arabia and Iraq. Today,

the most prominent—and powerful—Wahhabis are the Saudis.

Because they dominate media in the Arab world, many contemporary

Muslims have been taught a story of Islamic religious tradition from

which Sufism is rigorously excluded.

 

I first came across strongly anti-Sufi sentiments last fall when I

visited a shrine just outside Peshawar in Pakistan's North-West

Frontier Province. The Sufi shrine of Rahman Baba has for centuries

been a place where Muslim musicians and poets have gathered. It is

built around the tomb of a 17th century mystic poet whose Pashtu

Sufi verses have led to him being described as the nightingale of

Peshawar. A friend who had lived nearby in the 1980s advised me to

visit on a Thursday night, when crowds of Afghan refugee musicians

sing to their saint by the light of the moon—a sight he described

as unforgettable. Since he had left Peshawar, however, much had

changed. Two Saudi-funded madrasahs had been built on the road to

the shrine, and they had taken it upon themselves to halt what they

regarded as the shrine's un-Islamic practices.

 

One Thursday I drove out of Peshawar, passed the two madrasahs, and

found the tarmac road giving way to a mud track, down which herds of

sheep were throwing up huge clouds of dust as they were driven back

to their village compounds for the night. Past the village was a

well-irrigated enclosure sheltered by a windbreak of date palms.

Beyond lay the glistening white dome of the shrine, and facing it a

mosque and a new mud-brick library. Tamarind, neem trees and a

great, spreading banyan grew beside a bubbling spring. But there

were no musicians there that evening, only a small crowd of beggars,

a man selling chick peas and dates from a trolley, and a couple of

Sufi holy men carrying green flags. Watching suspiciously a short

distance away were two young men wearing full beards, white robes

and checked red-and-white Saudi ghuttras, or head scarves.

 

I asked one of the shrine's guardians, Tila Mohammed, why there were

not more pilgrims and what had happened to the musicians for which

his shrine was once famous. He motioned for me to come into his room

beside the library, out of the earshot of the two men in ghuttras.

 

" My family has been singing here for generations, " said Tila

Mohammed. " But now these Arab madrasah students come here and create

trouble. They tell us that what we do is wrong. They ask people who

are singing to stop. Sometimes arguments break out—even

fistfights. This used to be a place where people came for peace of

mind. Now they just encounter more problems, so gradually people

have stopped coming. "

 

" We pray that Baba will work a miracle, " Tila Mohammed continued,

" that good will overcome evil. But our way is pacifist. We love. We

never fight. When these Arabs come here, I just don't know what to

do to stop them. "

 

The tablighis in Nizamuddin are not Wahhabi, but their beliefs are

derived from similar theological traditions. They share the

Wahhabis' suspicion of the Sufis, and their effect on the Nizamuddin

shrine is the same, as they slowly attempt to undermine Islam's most

tolerant and syncretic incarnation just when that face of Islam is

most needed in healing the growing breach between Islam and other

religions. After leaving Amin at the doors of his Tablighi

headquarters, I headed on down into the alleys of Nizamuddin. Taking

off my sandals at the entrance of the shrine, I spoke with Hussein,

the old man who looks after the shoes of the pilgrims. I asked what

he thought of the Tablighis. Hussein's response was passionate:

" These people are so extreme and intolerant. Look around you.

Everyone in Delhi knows about the power of Nizamuddin. Everyone

knows that if your heart is pure and you ask him something, that he

cannot refuse you. I have felt his power in my own life. I lost my

hut in a slum clearance 10 years ago. I was hungry and I had

nothing. But I prayed to the saint, and through him I found a place

to stay and a way of supporting my family. I tell you: if anybody

abuses Nizamuddin Auliya, I will be the first to defend him—with

my knife if need be. "

 

It was a Thursday evening when, during the singing of the qawwalis,

the mesmerizing love songs of the Indian Sufis, the spiritual life

of the shrine was to reach its climax. Huge crowds of pilgrims were

already sitting cross-legged in the forecourt in front of the tomb,

and the first qawwali singers were beginning to strike up their

music. Around them was a press of excited onlookers. Most pilgrims

had come with their families—groups of little boys with eyes

wonderfully darkened with kohl, little girls who perhaps had been

ill and had been brought for healing. At the shrine itself there

were young women trying to tie small threads through the lattices of

its screens, each one of them with some prayer or petition, usually

a plea for marriage or children.

 

To one side was a huge cauldron of biryani that had just been

carried in to feed the poor. On another was a gathering of women who

had come to learn to read Arabic in the simple school that operated

from the back of the shrine. There were Muslim grandmothers in black

chadors from Bengal, Punjabi Sikhs in their blue turbans, Hindu

women from South India with the large red bindis on their foreheads,

all coming to pray to the saint, all coming to use Nizamuddin as

their intermediary to God.

 

http://www.time.com/time/asia/2004/journey/india.html