As militant Islam does its level best to discredit the religion, it's important to remember that there are other voices within the faith. One such is the Sufis, the Islamic mystics who live islam (submission), iman (faith) and ishan (awareness of G-d, "to act beautifully"). Idries Shah was surely one of them. This comes from an article by Edwin Kiester, Jr. entitled "Grand Sheikh of the Sufis":
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"Although each of these tales has a punchline, Shah explained, it also contains a teaching moral and can be examined on many levels for illumination of human behavior. Nasruddin's sermon, for example, depicts the Sufi belief that there can be no teaching to those completely ignorant, none to those who profess to know all the answers, and that the best teaching method is when one who has learned by experience teaches another.
(N.B. see the comments for Nasruddin's Sermon, lots of wise thoughts there from our readers too!)
Shah considers the tales an ideal way to communicate with the West. "One way we use them is as a sort of test," he said. "For instance, we often use the old Sufi tale of the sands:
A little river has to cross a desert, you see, and it runs into the sand. It finds it’s becoming a marsh. So the wind says to it, "Come with me and I will carry you over the desert." But the little river says, "No, no, I can't! I'll lose my identity! I refuse to be turned into water vapor!" So the wind says, "Well, all right. But look at you. You're becoming a marsh. You have to decide whether you wish to become a marsh or become water vapor.""Now when you tell this tale...So after a great deal of consideration the river finally yields up to the wind, which carries it into the high mountains and drops it in the form of rain, whereafter it continues as a river.
CONTINUED...
"Now when you tell this tale, some people – crude, barbaric types – see it as a sort of commercial. The guru is asking his disciples to surrender themselves to him and he will carry them safely over the marsh, which is death or some other condition in which they are going to stagnate or putrefy. Other people react in a quite different way. They say, "Oh, isn't that a beautiful story!" And they talk about nature and the transposition of substances and ecology and so on.
People who don't react in either of these ways can then use the story for further training of their hemispheres, as it were. They don't have the hangup that they think you are trying to convince them of something, or that they desperately want to be convinced.
What makes it very difficult in dealing with these stories is that people want to know, "Is it a test or is it a teaching?" and "How am I supposed to react to it?" "At what point does it become perceptible to me what it really means?" Which is rather like saying, "Is a house for eating in or sleeping in or blowing up?" It's all those things. But the so-called linear mind always wants you to 'get to the point.' A great deal of Sufism involves learning not in the sequence the Western mind expects to learn it. That is not acceptable to the sequential thinker who is incapable of thinking in any other way."
The value of these tales is often misunderstood, Shah said. Like Christ's parables, they are designed to enable the listener to hold in his mind a kind of structure to which he can relate philosophical or other considerations."
Bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim
Greetings,
Sufi's, peaceful? lol
Remember the assassins? The one's who lived up in the mountains and went around killing Caliph's? They were some of the original Sufi's. They suffered huge repression at the hands of the ruling Khilafah, and many of them resisted through political violence. Some of them were also used to great effect in killing Christian leaders during the Crusades.
Having said that, people like Ibn Arabi(A), Mullah Sadra(A), etc, are mystics who are not only respected amongst the Sunnah and the Shia, but also taught by the Ulema and Urefa in the Islamic Seminary in Qum, Iran.
Check the links below to learn about Islamic mysticism (which doesn't equate to militancy - or non-militancy - as the author suggests):
Ayatullah Araki(HA) - Reality of Irfan (article)
Allamah Tabatabai(A), Shaheed Mutahhari(A), Imam Khomeini(A) - Light Within Me (book)
Ibn Arabi - Various Articles (scroll down to "Online Reading" and check the selection)
Islamic spirituality is what takes a man from being a pathetic being clinging on to this meaningless world with all his meager might, to a Mujahid ready to sacrifice his body in the way of Allah.
There is no such thing as "militant" and "non-militant" Islam. Islam is Islam. It always will be.
Sincerely,
Ali
First, thanks for the links. Yes, there are indeed several varieties of Islamic mysticism (though the Sufis are the most recognized in the West), just as there are multiple flavours of Jewish and Christian mysticism. Apologies if I implied anything else.
Re: the hashishyn (from when the term "assassin" comes). The Mongols under Hulagu dealt with them rather effectively around 1250 A.D., and the Shi'ite succession issue that had inspired this particular sect lost its power over time. Though I might add that the Islamili themselves tell a different story.
Still, if your point is that Islamic mysticism can be violent or allows for violence, then of course the answer is yes. That said, the Sufi belief system does indeed appear to be far more compatible with tolerance that militantly supremacist versions of Islam, and also contains interesting and accessible parallels with other mystic traditions from Zen to Hasidism to Gnosticism. Throw in their substantial cultural contributions to humanity and general track record over history, and I believe the respect shown them here is deserved.
I would also note that Ismaili is not the same as Sufi, or vice-versa. Sufiism is a wider movement beholden neither to Shiism nor to Sunni Islam, which eventually developed stable orders throughout the Islamic world: the Rifaiyya, Suhrawardiyya and Qadiriyya began of Iraq, the Shahiliyya of Egypt, Mawlawiyya in Anatolia and the Naqshbandiyya in Central Asia. Several of them began or reached prominence after the destruction of the Assassin Order.
The Sufis' overall reputation has been more heavily influenced by the Ottoman experience of Islam to the spread of Sufiism in the Indian subcontinent. "Official" appointees aside, I don't see the Sufis as likely to regress any time soon. Nor can you argue with a straight face that the Ismai'li Aga Khan or his followers in Pakistan (persecuted, I might add, by other Muslims) are anything at all like that.
Another area where we do disagree, and sharply: there is NOT one Islam. That's just a mindless slogan, repeated not because it's true but because it's comforting - and because it covers up (or stops through persecution) debate within the faith.
Since Islam is also strongly political, it also partakes of classification in political terms. That classification must say there are many forms of Islam, that the differences matter, and that discussion of those differences is a force for progress. When Wahabbis systematically destroy Sufi holy sites, in Arabia and even in Kosovo, you cannot seriously argue that Islam is one except in the most abstract religious sense.
The sooner we leave the fiction of ONE ISLAM behind, the better for all concerned.
Bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim
Greetings,
There is only one Islam. That is the Islam given by the Prophet(S). All other types of Islam are void.
Islam is the supreme religion, as Allah tells humanity in the Qur'an.
Sincerely,
Ali
Wa aleikum musallam
Ali
I am interested in your view on the hadith.
It was carefully separated from the Qur'an. To me that means it was not from Allah and so it is no more sacred than any other unrevealed writing. What do you think?
Oz
The assassins were Ismaili's faction ( Aziri) not Sufis. Go read the History books and stop spreading lies. This is the most stupidest
dumbf*** distortion of truth that I have ever heard or read.
The thing is that you self-righteous religious hypocrites are so closed minded is evident in the stuff you wrote. Too bad it was posted in '03.