Bismimg2

This series of “How to Criticise Islam” is simply to instruct critics on some actual points of contention that are worth discussing with traditionalists. I believe there are answers to each and every criticism I will list, but I believe the discussion with traditionalists from reformists needs to go in this direction, in order to solidify the traditional position on these issues.

Such a direction is far better than the accusations of immorality and other polemic that I have seen so far.

Criticism #1:

Traditional Islam ties worldly success and legal justice to spiritual success.

Muslims for the past few centuries have witnessed something that is, really, an entirely alien phenomenon for us: success without spirit. The rise of the Western powers in nearly all worldly matters while speeding up its spiritual decline. Enormous wealth, scientific advancement, free education, plentiful food, have all become trademarks of the West. At the same time, the same people who are living in such success have become diseased spiritually, they look towards far-east religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism), or they look to far-out religions (Wiccan, New-Age, Scientology). Or, they resort to atheism. Yet, their success continues to exceed all bounds.

Traditional Muslims on the other hand are used to looking at our sad state of affairs, and generally blaming it on our lack of Islam or our spiritual condition otherwise. We often forget the verse that “Allah provides without measure to whom He wills.” We point to Andalus or other golden-ages of Islam and say confidently, “Look, when we practiced Traditional Islamic Law we achieved so much.”

This is true, but at the same time we have to recognize that the West has achieved worldly success in the absence of Traditional Islamic Law, and for that we should analyze their system and its differences with our own. Having created a system of government which rules without taking into account spiritual authority or spiritual levels, the Law for the West has become sacred. The law of the West is, in actually, much more rigid and hard to change (in application of individuals) than Traditional Islamic Law, whose basis is really the spiritual authority of the judge.

This malleability is problematic for Traditional Islam as much of the Traditional Law is ripe to be abused when implemented improperly or in piece-meal. We learn the value placed of the role of Qadi (Judge), from Hadith which state that the Judge who rules incorrectly is given one reward and the Judge that rules correctly is two. However it is important to remember that this presupposes that the Judge has intentions of judging by the Shariah, and not his own ego or desires.

What lesson can we learn from Umar (R) and the Hadd punishment? Umar (R) suspended the Hadd punishment during times of famine, and from his example we learn that those who are connected spiritually would know when it is appropriate to follow the letter of the law and when to take exceptions due to other considerations. What did he use to determine that he could suspend the punishment of stealing during a famine?

It seems he used his wisdom and spiritual authority. Could the West respond with such humanity? Katrina style executions of people looting for food tells us, “Apparently not.” At the same time, such flexibility opens up the Muslim population for abuse by the authority of one who is driven by his ego.

We learn from this that it is wisdom and spirituality of the Qadi’s that Muslims, under a traditional system, are really in the hands of, not legal codes, subsections or article D’s.

The answer of the West is to codify laws so that overt abuse becomes eliminated or, at least, hidden.

The answer of Traditional Islam, for the most part, is much more vague: work on the heart of the individual and society.

Bismimg2

Traditionalism as My Label

My subtitle to my blog is ‘A Traditional Muslim’s Blog’, an interesting title I thought for the blog when I originally set out.

The thought occurred to me, “Here I am, labeling myself!”

A few problems exist with labels in general.

Labels have become unpopular in the modern Muslim World, the catch-phrase of today is “I’m just a Muslim” (I add, “the plain vanilla-extract variety”).

Why this fear of words? For Muslims it has become quite common to blame labels instead of actual ideas. It is in the nature of all people to blame easy things for complex problems, were we to blame specific idea’s in question we would actually have to spend time to understand them. Therefore, we live in a world where many Muslims are quick to blame “Wahabi’s” for their ill’s just as quickly as others are ready to blame “Sufi’s”. This is a symptom of the larger problem of the Muslim ummah, an inability to think as the ‘other’. Muslims, in general, lack the ability to recognize the subtleties and complexities that lie in our history.

Secondly, labels have also become associated with certain ‘characters’ in people’s mind. It is therefore difficult to open a dialogue and hold positions that are contrary to what people have begun to expect from their mental effigy. Conversations routinely turn into strawman-arguments where neither party actually holds the belief that the other is disproving.

Third, one may have to feel like they must ‘live-up-to’ a label, and this is often a spiritual disaster. Salafi-burn-out is an example of this phenomenon, as it is not necessarily their beliefs or practices that wear them down, but a ‘buy-in’ into the rhetoric.

In the end, I prefer honesty, and I find a world without labels is a dishonest approach to life. I also believe a religion without labels inherently supports a reductionist approach to religion, both the “Reform” or “Wahabi” flavors. If we say there are no labels, then we have to get to the nitty-gritty and deal with actual practices and beliefs. On this path, we can find groups whose sole purpose is to eliminate institutions such as the Sufi Tariqas, the schools of Fiqh, and the practices such as various forms of Dhikr, Milad, or Hijab. Since traditional Islam is the superclass and ‘they’ are the subset, we find we are asked to eliminate our core practices and beliefs (in the spirit of ‘unity’). In this manner, entire areas of what has traditionally been understood as ‘Islam’ are wiped out.

Now amongst the variety of labels, ‘traditional’, is the most honest definition I can give to the casual reader of my positions and beliefs. Other titles (”Sunni”, “Sufi”) might imply a certain level of religiosity or piousness that I was not ready to deal with. Unfortunately, even with the use of the vague word ‘traditional’, debates have gone in that direction, where talks of ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ Muslims have entered the equation. From where I stand, such shifts in the topic seem to be guilt-driven (who said Catholic’s owned guilt?), and they are inherently off-topic.

New Labels

Traditionalism has it’s own unique problems as a label. First there is the confusion that arises with the word ‘tradition’ itself. To westerner’s it can imply modern-day Muslims of countries that are known to be “Islamic”. To modernists it can imply a lack of connection to the modern-world. To Islamo-phobes it simply implies ‘barbarians’. Of course, traditionalism is really none of the above.

Lately the use of “Western Islamic Traditionalism” or “neo-traditionalists” have been applied to thinkers such as Shaikh Abdal Hakim Murad or Shaykh Nuh. Again, a distortion of the truth, while these are some of the few representatives of traditional thinking in West, they have been taught by those from the East. In this regard, they are transmitters more than revolutionary thinkers, and therefore such titles are ill-suited. There is nothing Western about the traditionalism taught by today’s ulema and there is nothing ‘neo’ about joining in the learning from the chain of generations of scholars.

Traditional Islam, According to Me

For me, traditional Islam is the Islam of the majority of Muslims throughout history. It is the Islam of the quaint villages, the Islam of children who became our grandfathers, the Islam of the soldiers who died for it, the Islam of the great scholars of our past who lived for it. Traditionalism means following Islam as it has been understood by the majority of our predecessors, who learned from their predecessors, who learned from the Prophet Muhammad himself.

Traditionalism is abandoning moral relativism, realizing that the Prophet Muhammad knew and predicted the future and still had a lot to say about how to live without adding caveats such as “until the 20th century”. Traditional Islam is realizing that while a few questions of Islam are brand new, most of them have been answered and are not ‘colored by context’ to the point that we need to apply bleach to the entire load. Traditionalism is recognizing that even if there are new questions they should be answered by those who have studied Islam, in-depth, according to the traditional manner first.

Traditionalism is taking a step back and analyzing accepted norms, and why they are so readily accepted. Traditionalism is realizing that the very concept of a nation-state was alien to Muslims. Traditionalism is about learning our history, not twisting it based off of things reported in wikipedia.

Specifically, my form of Osmanli Traditionalism is recognizing that the Calipha ruled overarchingly but communities ruled themselves absolutely. Traditionalism is about realizing the fact that though maps show Ottoman land borders stopping well before Persia, the Caliph’s words were still being read in Indian mosques. Traditionalism is about reading about our leaders, from amongst orientalist lies, separating fact from fiction, and finding the gems of wisdom they held while learning from their mistakes.

My personal understanding of ‘traditionalism’ is finding wisdom about our spiritual authority as well as worldly authority in the ayat:

O ye who believe! Obey Allah, and obey the Messenger, and those charged with authority among you. If ye differ in anything among yourselves, refer it to Allah and His Messenger, if ye do believe in Allah and the Last Day: That is best, and most suitable for final determination. 04-59

And the hadith:

The Prophet called us to pledge allegiance to him which we did. We had been asked to pledge to the following: ‘We shall listen and obey whether willingly or unwillingly whether we are in difficulty or at ease, and even when we do not receive what is your right and that we shall not contest the authority of our rulers’. The Prophet of God said: You can only rise against them if you witness outright Kufr in any matter from them, in which you have a clear evidence from God. (Sahih Muslim 1709)

I understand from this that any rebellion from the Caliphate was literally anti-Islamic, that the scourge of reform/separatist movements including that of the Wahabi/Salafi were political far more than religious. I fear the recurrence of danger from a group that was once ready to kill the Ottoman Muslims which they believed ’showed outright Kufr’. If those accusations led to civil-war yesterday, what will they do tomorrow?

Traditional Islam is realizing history does repeat itself, and in that manner today’s terrorists were yesterday’s Wahabi seperatists and today’s modernist ‘thinkers’ were yesterday’s “Young Turks”.

And who is representing the villager who was simply doing his salat, his dhikr according to his Shaykh, reciting his Quran, praying the Janaza for those who passed, earning from the land? Who was it who subscribed and sold their trinkets for the Sultan Osman I? Who was it who sent their sons and daughters fighting at Galipoli, wearing a Henna mark while being ridiculed by more ‘modern’ officers? That is the realm of the traditionalist.

Traditionalism is about submission, the very definition of Muslim. Submitting to those in authority, submitting to our ulema, submitting to our parents, submitting to our wives, submitting to our husbands. Submitting in all those ways in order to learn the lesson involved in absolute submission to Allah. Traditionalism is realizing that certain things were meant for kings and others were meant for servants. Traditionalism is not anger-rooted fatalism, but the realization that we are like Mary’s (AS) hand.

Traditional Islam is about realizing that tradition is constantly evolving and is inherently pluralistic and compassionate. It is continuously becoming modern by answering new questions and supporting multiple opinions. It is about rolling up our sleeves and dealing with specific problems and issues within the context of that tradition, not trying to escape the Prophet’s (S) words at every opportunity..

With all this in mind, ‘Traditionalism’ is very easily critiqued, yet I am surprised I don’t see such criticisms -ever-.

In the next part I will join in the critique of traditional Islam … hey, it’s in vogue!

Bismimg2

I remember being on the ICNA YM list where a link was sent out to Chenyan Mujahids who were performing the zikr of the type described below.  

They mocked them, their zikr, and made accusations of bidaat and shirk (as most of them are trained to do).  These were men, who as described below, continued their rememberance of Allah while Russian bombers flew overhead.  They knew where their protection came from.

I have since heard from my Shaykh, who had and has relationships with the Chechens, that nearly all of those men in that video died as a mujahids in the battle. 

Here is the article (emphasis mine):

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/24/world/europe/24grozny.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Religion Returns to Chechnya
The New York Times
GROZNY, Russia — Three circles of barefoot men, one ring inside another, sway to the cadence of chant.

Grozny is the capital of Chechnya, where secessionism has been rife.
The men stamp in time as they sway, and grunt from the abdomen and throat, filling the room with a primal sound. One voice rises over the rest, singing variants of the names of God.

The men stop, face right and walk counterclockwise, slowly at first, then fast. As they gain speed they begin to hop on their outside feet and draw closer. The three circles merge into a spinning ball.

The ball stops. It opens back up. The stamping resumes, softly at first, then louder. Many of the men are entranced. The air around them hums. The wooden floor shakes. The men turn left and accelerate the other way.

This is a zikr, the mystical Sufi dance of the Caucasus and a ritual near the center of Chechen Islam.

Here inside Chechnya, where Russia has spent six years trying to contain the second Chechen war since the Soviet Union collapsed, traditional forms of religious expression are returning to public life. It is a revival laden with meaning, and with implications that are unclear.

The Kremlin has worried for generations about Islam’s influence in the Caucasus, long attacking local Sufi traditions and, in the 1990’s, attacking the role of small numbers of foreign Wahhabis, proponents of an austere Arabian interpretation of Islam whom Moscow often accuses of encouraging terrorist attacks.

But Chechnya’s Sufi brotherhoods have never been vanquished — not by repression, bans or exile by the czars or Stalin, and not by the Kremlin of late.

Now they are reclaiming a place in public life. What makes the resurgence so unusual is that Sufi practices have become an element of policy for pro-Russian Chechens. Zikr ceremonies are embraced by the kadyrovsky, the Kremlin-backed Chechen force that is assuming much of the administration of this shattered land.

Post-Soviet Russia tried to make zikr celebrations a symbol of Chechen aggression, portraying zikr as the dance and trance of the rebels, the ritual of the untamed. Now zikr is performed by the men the Kremlin is counting on to keep Chechnya in check.

The occasion for ceremony on this day was the blessing of the foundation of a mosque that will be named for Akhmad Kadyrov, the Russian-backed Chechen president who was assassinated in 2004.

The mosque, whose foundation rests on the grounds of the former headquarters of the Communist Party’s regional committee, is meant to replace older associations. Not only is it an implicit rebuke of Communism, it is situated beside the ruins of another, much smaller mosque that was being constructed by the separatists in the 1990’s.

Its scale and grandeur are intended as public statement. At a cost of $20 million, it will be a sprawling complex, with room for a religious school and a residence for the mufti, said Amradin Adilgeriyev, an adviser to Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s pro-Kremlin premier and son of the slain president.

The mosque will hold 10,000 worshipers, making it the largest in the republic. Its minarets will rise 179 feet in the air. It will speak not just of faith, but of power.

And so on this day the men dance. And dance. Tassels on their skullcaps bounce and swing. Sweat darkens their shirts. They are perhaps 90 in men in all, mostly young. They look strong. But zikr is demanding. As some of them tire, they step aside. Others take their place.

Their stamping can be heard two blocks away.

The entrance to the construction site is controlled by gunmen who make sure that none of the separatists enters with a bomb. Other young men boil brick-sized chunks of beef in caldrons of garlic broth, stirring the meat with a wooden slab.

Zikr has several forms. This form traces its origins to Kunta-Haji Kishiyev, a shepherd who traveled the Middle East in the 19th century, then returned to Chechnya and found converts to Sufism. Initially his followers pledged peace, but in time many joined the resistance to Russia, and their leader was exiled. They fought on, becoming a reservoir of Chechen traditionalism and rebellious spirit.

In 1991, when Chechnya declared independence from Russia, the Kunta-Haji brotherhoods, long underground, fought again. Sebastian Smith, who covered the Chechen wars and wrote “Allah’s Mountains: Politics and War in the Russian Caucasus,” noted that they became a source of rebel resolve.

At one zikr ceremony he observed, the men were dancing, he wrote, until a Russian bomber screamed low overhead, buzzing the village. Mr. Smith watched their reaction. “No one even looks up,” he wrote. “The whooping grows louder.”

The Sufis resisted the influx of Wahhabis who came to fight Russia beside them, but whose version of Islam aligned more closely with that of the Afghan Taliban.

Mr. Kadyrov said in an interview that he hoped to help restore Chechen Sufi traditions as part of an effort to preserve Chechen culture. He has reopened the roads to Ertan, a village in the mountains, where Kunta-Haji Kishiyev’s mother is buried. Her grave is a shrine and a place for pilgrimages, which for years were not made. This spring the roads to Ertan are crowded with walkers, who visit the grave to circle it and pray.

Still, efforts to incorporate Sufi brotherhoods into a government closely identified with the Kremlin contain contradictions. Some see manipulation on Mr. Kadyrov’s part, noting that Chechen self-identity has never been suppressed, even by some of the most repressive forces the world has ever known.

Whether Mr. Kadyrov can control the forces he taps into is unknown. The zikrists dance on this day with state approval. But for whom?

“Kadyrov wants to show that he is a supporter of Chechen traditional Islam,” said Aslan Doukaev, a native of Chechnya who is director of the North Caucasus service of Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty. “But Sufis always wanted Chechen independence, and that signal is being sent here too.”

 

Bismimg2

Brought to you by the Osmanli Naksibendi-Hakkani Tariqat

After a long day of travel from upstate and a night spent in remembrance of Allah, the murid’s pulled out some of the instruments to add some additional barakat to the night.  Recorded in New York City, 39th St. Dergah.

After Hours 2 - Mp3  5MB  Running Time: 3:56 -

Talented fellow murid’s, good times. Much Barakat.

NOTE: String instruments present for those who avoid them.

Bismimg2

*update: please take note that my use of specific ayats is to ‘cater’ to the argument parameters set forth by those I am discussing with.  I am arguing for the permissibility of things established in Islamic Law.  As far as the applicability, this is a secondary concern and not one that is part of the discourse.

It is truly amazing the direction this conversation has taken. 

Haroon has responded at Avari/Nameh to the conversation with eteraz. 

I’m not a writer per se, and I don’t plan on selling any books in my lifetime.  With this post I respond now to another accomplished writer whose command of that very same language far outstrips mine.  On the other hand, I like to think my comments are grounded in rationality, and I adore bullet style points and responses.  It appeals to my computer-science trained brain.

So that is how I will approach this.

 Thabet led me to a fierce  if somewhat hollow assault on Eteraz by Yursil, of Mind, Body, Soul; be sure to read the comments section for one especially brutal note. However, Eteraz is not one to take any of this bending over — he slams back, both here and then here, making it clear that he wasn’t taken too seriously by Yursil, to Yursil’s disadvantage. (Then Eteraz receives his response; I am upset that Yursil has to qualify what Muslims can tolerate, vis-a-vis the Divine, as the specific respect exclusive, by implication if not deduction, of the traditionalist.)

I would recommend that Haroon first catch up as to what occurred here.  My post responded to a direct assault on traditional Islam. 

 I-S-L-A-M.

The beliefs, laws, rules, guidelines of Islam.  My faith.  Excuse me for being passionate about it.

Haroon’s boxing-style commentary of the discussion is quite entertaining, but fairly inaccurate. Several questions have been left unanswered by eteraz, and his last comments on my previous post speak volumes as to where the conversation ended.

 While he might have his reasons to accuse Eteraz of practicing in, or agreeing to, an imperfect or erroneous Islam (by and large according to his traditionalist model), the debate is not, and has never been, about who is the good Muslim and who is going to heaven and when and after how long in what level of hellfire.

In the first part Haroon speaks of determining a perfect or erroneous Islam, and in the next we are speaking of good or bad Muslims.  This is a disingenuous transition for Haroon, as the topic, since Eteraz decided to attack traditional Islam in the post-that-started-it-all-for-me, has been just that:

Is my ‘Islam’ barbaric, backwards and deserving such denigration?

What is the correct ‘Islam’, the ‘progressive’ understanding or the ‘traditional’ one?

The topic was not whether I am a better Muslim, personally, than Eteraz. 

The difference (that Haroon chooses to ignore) is that Eteraz presents his personal ideals as the true Islam or at least truer than what he considers ‘traditional Islam’.  In his mind, eteraz’s ’Islam’ far outweighs us traditional barbarians in social justice and moral legitimacy. 

Of course, his gauge for this judgement is Western humanistic morality.

Frankly, this seems more of a support-your-blog-buddy type post than I would have expected from Haroon. 

Not being aware of the initial attack on traditionalism, and then trying to redefine the debate to one that Haroon is more comfortable with (traditionalists scholars take on history) is quite alarming. 

Where did Eteraz bring up these points?  Why didn’t he?  Because it wasn’t relevant, I wasn’t discussing a utopian society of some time past. 

I understand Haroon’s criticism of ‘traditionalism’ in terms of historical idealism, heck I may agree with him.   But what does that have to do with Aqidah, Fiqh, Adab and our basic fundamental understanding of the Quran?

 [In his responses, Eteraz is brilliant: He points out that traditional Islam had its strengths, but also its weaknesses, and globalization and modernization are sufficient to force us to change our paradigms.]

Ego-stroking.  We know from previous praise where Haroon stands on Eteraz.  He may wish to reconsider this opinion. 

Honestly Haroon, I appreciate your command of history and the English language, but history as irrelevant to this conversation. 

This, to me, is about belief, sacredness, and deviation.  Not what occurred a 100 years ago or 200 years ago, or even 500 years ago.  This is about what occurred 1400 years ago when the Prophet Muhummad (S) received a Divine Message from God.  

This is the age old debate between Muslims who have encountered other civilizations, other ideas they deem superior to their own Tawheed-based philosophy.  Is the Quran is a complete metaphor, designed for the uneducated masses…  which a new, ‘enlightened intellectual elite’ can rise above or see through? 

 Islam is from God; the Qur’an is from God; the Sunnah is from God through His Prophet, peace be upon him, and the course of the Prophet’s mission was of course divinely intended. But how do we draw the lines between where context begins and immanence ends? What is reason and what is revelation? What makes the Qur’an God’s word? By which I mean — what type of speech is God’s speech, if God’s speech is being delivered in a language developed by humans over centuries? (I don’t mean to be impious, and I don’t want to be taken impiously. I want to point out the fuzziness of our boundaries.)

Haroon gets a bit more on topic here. 

Haroon may have fuzzy boundaries, but he probably would not be surprised by the fact that I am not fuzzy on these subjects at all.  The Quran is God’s speech.  It is delivered in a language that He declared:

Surely We have revealed it– an Arabic Quran– that you may understand.” Surah Yusuf

Can we say that this verse is ’fuzzy’?  Not to me. It means the Almighty gave us the Quran in Arabic at that time and place for a purpose.

A few of the issues at hand.

“Marry women of your choice, two, or three, or four; but if you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly (with them), then only one.” (4:3)

When condemning polygamy, does Haroon join Eteraz?  Can we blame this on a ‘fuzzy’ understanding of Arabic, or is there more to it?  This verse directly deals with polygamy. 

Etereaz complains that it is permitted here and here.. Why is there even a doubt as to whether it is permitted in his mind? 

“And who guard their private-parts - Save from their wives or the (slaves) that their right hands possess.”  (23:5-6)

The same, except the topic is slavery.  Here we are shown we can expose ourselves to wives and the slaves our right hand posses.  Is there doubt to this?  Etereaz condemns that it is permitted here and here..   I could understand doubts by a lack of knowledge, but there is no doubt here. This is condemnation.

Allah enjoins you about [the share of inheritance of] your children: A male’s share shall equal that of two females — in case there are only daughters, more than two shall have two-thirds of what has been left behind…. (4:11)

Woman’s inheritance, a condemnation in his original post here.

… party liable is mentally deficient, or weak, or unable Himself to dictate, Let his guardian dictate faithfully, and get two witnesses, out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as ye choose, for witnesses… (2:282).

Eteraz complains about the witness of a woman being (according to the traditional understanding, in certain cases) less than a man. The Quran is pretty clear on this above.  Do we think time and such have made the Quran less valuable or less clear? 

Eteraz already essentially tosses out hadith for determining anything of substance, so these are direct QURANIC ayats.  What is the response?   Nothing.  Sidetracking issues.

There is an outstanding question of what Eteraz considers such verses to mean.  If he ignores them, then we might as well be speaking to the atheist Eteraz that once was.  When we don’t have a common ground on even a sacred text we have a problem with terminology, “Muslim” is being misused.

Let’s put aside my original responses on FGM not existing within traditional Islam, Islam providing a means out of slavery (and the West’s debt-slavery replacement program), and finally that the West also puts different norms for female and male dress. 

When he criticizes these things, he is in my opinion, directly criticizing God’s word.   Does Haroon see this differently?  Are we sure this is the man we want to be defending?

 Joking or not, should Islam be morphed into something that allows us to casually say:

“There are times when I don’t believe in God (it’s an organic relationship).”

Should the Almighty be treated with such reckless abandon that His words are actually mocked and that His name is even on the same line as a ‘pimp’?  Should the rewards of Paradise be mocked and rejected, while we stay silent?  Is this the man/Islam that Haroon endorses?

Conclusions to these and other questions, for a believing Muslim should be clear. 

I recommend Haroon re-read the dialogue with some more context. 

And while I love reading his excellent prose (Allah has Blessed Haroon, and he should be grateful) I hope he manages to stay on topic.

Here is the post again, Haroon.  Brilliant.

Dear Brother Alex’s blog pointed me out to this post by Shabana Mir titled “Literalistic Wahabistic Sufism”. (Alternative Link)

One of the problems of tariqa is that students are rarely capable of understanding the fundamentals of their own tariqa, much less attempting to understand another. Before we begin labeling other tariqa’s as “goofy-sufi’s” or “literalistic wahabi sufi’s”, are we ready to examine our own tariqa or at least our own commitment to tariqa?

There also seems to be a confusion brewing among supposed Sufi mureeds and mureedah’s, such as in Shabana’s article, that Sufism is simply a form of anti-Wahabi Islam. It is disturbing to her that, outwardly, some Sufi’s may actually look or behave like Wahabi’s (in terms of promoting orthodoxy and other traditional practices). The question becomes, is it the Sufi’s imitating the Wahabi’s or is it quite the reverse?

Why don’t we first examine the purpose of Sufism? Tazkiyat al Nafs. Purification of the self, the ego.

Looking at history, one can see Sufi’s were very well established as to their purpose and methods well before the birth of these extremists reformers. Not everyone was a mureed. Those that decided to accept the Way dedicated themselves to the principles of their tariqa and the lessons taught by their Shaykh. Suppressing the Nafs is not a simple matter, and the organized approach offered by the tariqa’s is grounded with specific techniques in order to enact change.

The first thing we need to understand is that Tazkiyat al Nafs involves change. Gradual or [shudder] immediate, the mureed is nothing if he is not affected by the transformative process of the tariqa in either some minor or major way. A failure to change is a really a failure of the mureed, of the Shaykh and of the tariqa itself. I wonder if some may consider the transformation as something less than “real” as the article suggests? If so, what form of transformation is acceptable to our ultra-modern brethren?

In fact, it is part of the transformative process that Sufi’s leave what is considered a false ‘reality’ to a more true form of reality. What they leave cannot be described as “Western”, nor is it even “Eastern”, but it is what we call the “Dunya” itself. Any simple glance of the work of the great Shaykh’s of Islam will provide that understanding.

The second thing to emphasize is that Sufism is not the religion, it is simply the area of study. The religion is Islam. Progressive, reformist, modernist ideas might have a place in Islam as a religion, but the claim that Sufism incorrectly promotes dogmatic or literalistic ideals is quite odd to hear. A tariqa is a -Way- towards self-purification and control over one’s ego, changing how that is accomplished is (in reality) creating a new tariqat.

And when dealing with a multitude of Sufi orders, the best way to judge between them is through something we call the Shariat, which is quite a bit older than the 12th century mentioned in Shabana’s article. Shariat is the compass which allows us to seperate the deviant versus the rightly guided in all things in life (not just Sufism). Furthermore, the proper implementation of the Sacred Law is in fact, an intricate part of many Tariqa’s lessons and techniques:

Partly because their staunch orthodoxy recommended them to the ulema, the Naksibendiye were among the most widespread and politically and socially influential Ottoman tarikats. - Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad “Spiritual Life in Ottoman Turkey”

As far as this omnipresent fear of applying the Shariat to one’s life that exists within some of the pseudo-elite Western Muslims: the idea that it’s application is somehow, less “Real”, is actually quite sad. Is it “wahabistic literalism” to believe that there exists legalism at all within the Islamic tradition?

If we can at least acknowledge some form of legalism exists within Islam, then why don’t we spend time learning that (in the traditional manner) before condemning it to be too “firm” or “literalistic”?

Understanding the complexities of Shariat law and how it can organically grow within its own tradition is quite important before creating an irrational fear of it in one’s heart. A fear that may come from the unknown or knowing only pieces.

When considering some of the inconveniences Shariat may cause (i.e. in Shabana’s flight example), it might be helpful to remember that it is one’s nafs which hates inconveniences and loves ease.

Finally, the accusation of an ill-functioning “gradualism” away from “literalism” is one that Shabana will want to rethink. It is not gradualism in the direction of abandoning Shariat that even the ‘easy’ Sufi tariqas take. Rather, it is a historically recorded technique of the Sufi orders to use gradualism towards Shariat, at least when dealing with the masses. The Wahabi movement is actually a good example of this. It only took a few centuries for many of today’s Indo/Pak Muslims to go from being converted to Islam by Sufi’s (from liberal pagan religions) to adoring the most rigid literalistic forms of Islam.

It is actually an important reminder for all of us that Sufism does promote a proper application of the Shariat as part of its very core.

The Wahabi’s are wrong, but its not because they adore the Shariat and Orthodoxy, it is because they misunderstand it.