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 Mesaj Başlığı: Islamabad sees sufism as extremist antidote
MesajGönderilme zamanı: 23.06.09, 13:38 #mesajın linki (?)
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Kayıt: 12.03.09, 15:53
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Islamabad sees sufism as extremist antidote

Islamabad is set to combat the ongoing insurgency by spreading sufi thoughts and teachings across the violence-wracked country.

Government sources on Sunday announced setting up of a seven-member 'Sufi Advisory Council' (SAC) with an aim to combating extremism and fanaticism by spreading sufism in the country, Dawn News reported.

The SAC chairman and some of its members are said to be holding their first meeting at the ministry of religious affairs in Islamabad on Tuesday June 9.

The council will also invite what it calls progressive intellectuals in an effort to promote the flourishing of sufism.

It is not clear whether SAC will play a parallel role in the presence of Council of Islamic Ideology which is a constitutional body.

The decision comes as Islamabad and other major cities across Pakistan have been braced for suicide attacks since the army launched an offensive against the insurgents in the troubled northwestern Swat valley and its adjoining districts in early May.

Press TV


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 Mesaj Başlığı: Re: Islamabad sees sufism as extremist antidote
MesajGönderilme zamanı: 23.06.09, 13:48 #mesajın linki (?)
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State-Sponsored Sufism

By Ali Eteraz


Posted June 2009

Why are U.S. think tanks pushing for state-sponsored Islam in Pakistan?

Once certain ideas go mainstream, it often takes a pretty big flop to disprove them. The United States was supposed to be hailed as the liberator of Iraq, just as it was going to be easy to turn Afghanistan into a democracy. Well now, according to commentators from the BBC to the Economist to the Boston Globe, Sufism, being defined as Islam's moderate or mystical side, is apparently just the thing we need to deal with violent Muslim extremists. Sufis are the best allies to the West, these authors say; support them, and countries as diverse as Pakistan and Somalia could turn around.

The Sufi theory has a lot of variations, but at its core, it's pretty simple: Violent Muslim extremism, rather than having material and political bases, is caused by certain belligerent readings of Islam usually associated with Salafism, a movement that attempts to resurrect the Islam of the prophet Mohammed's time, and Wahhabism, a similarly conservative branch. If Muslims can be indoctrinated with another, softer, interpretation of Islam, then the militants, insurgents, and guerrilla fighters will melt away.

Well, these pundits have gotten their wish. Pakistan just announced the creation of a seven-member Sufi Advisory Council (SAC) that is meant to combat the Taliban insurgency by spreading Sufi "thoughts and teachings." The SAC's predecessor was a Musharraf-era PR stunt called the National Sufi Council that was headed by a rather feudal Punjabi politician -- the group did little more than print a few calendars and hold a musical gala in Lahore. It is not yet clear whether the seven-member SAC, which met for the first time June 9, will be independent of the country's Council of Islamic Ideology, a body outlined in Pakistan's 1973 Constitution that advises whether laws are consistent with sharia. But if the SAC does become an official organ, it will add yet another layer of religious governance to a country wracked by religious conflict.

The creation of the SAC is not good news. It signals an increase in the politicization of Islam in Pakistan -- if a higher level is even possible. Now, even the pietist and welfare-oriented groups that have traditionally abstained from overindulging in government affairs will be tempted to become mouthpieces for corrupt political actors. For evidence, look no further than the SAC's new head, a former minister from the regime of ultra-Wahhabi dictator Zia ul-Haq, whose promotion probably has nothing to do with mysticism and more to do with the fact that he has called for Sufi Mohammed of Swat to be tried on charges of mutiny. It is exactly the sort of politicization of religion that has led to so many problems in Pakistan since independence in 1947.

The usual response by supporters of the Sufi solution is that thanks to the extremists, Islam has already been politicized, and therefore propagandist measures promoting Sufism are the only way to fight back. But that's precisely the problem: Propaganda is inherently discrediting. Besides, state-sponsored Sufism (which the SAC is) gets everything backward: In an environment where demagogues are using religion to conceal their true political and material ambitions, establishing another official, "preferred" theological ideology won't roll back their influence. Minimizing the role of all religion in government would be a better idea. Only then could people begin to speak about rights and liberty.

The opposite is now happening in Pakistan, fomenting an ongoing religious civil war. The SAC will undoubtedly embolden extremists by giving them ideological motivation: They now have evidence to provide young recruits and foot soldiers that the "war" they are fighting is, in fact, about the integrity of Islam. Far from reducing extremists' influence, the SAC is doing them a favor.

This is quite apparent in the types of cases -- or rather, spats -- that the Sufi Advisory Council will now adjudicate. Take for example a recent accusation by Syed Munawar Hassan, the head of the fundamentalist organization Jamat-e-Islami, that Sufi Mohammed, the man behind the recent imposition of sharia law in Swat, is "a little infidel." Substance is hardly at the heart of this debate.

It's not that Sufism in and of itself can't help. In the private sphere, it is welcome, laudable, and indeed quite beautiful to behold. But the SAC did not spring out of an internal debate among religious scholars in Pakistan. It came instead from American think tanks -- like Rand and Heritage Foundation -- intent on exploiting sectarian divisions in various Muslim countries, because they insist on addressing the war on terror in religious terms.

Interestingly enough, another early advocate of this approach was none other than Benazir Bhutto. Despite having a Shiite heritage, she became a member of a traditionally Sufi -- and Sunni -- Pakistani organization called Minhaj ul-Quran (check out this YouTube video of her meeting with Minhaj leaders, in which she doesn't have enough cash on her to cover the fees). I believe that her reasons for joining Minhaj were part of a larger plan -- laid out in her book, Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West -- to use religious forces to her political advantage. After all, that impulse is precisely what led Bhutto to give the stamp of approval to the Taliban in the mid-1990s -- and led her father to declare Islam the state religion of Pakistan in 1973. Today is no different. As Ayesha Siddiqa, a leading Pakistani commentator, has presciently noted, beginning a "faith war" between Sufi and Salafi in Pakistan would simply drive more youth toward fundamentalism.

In short, after years of bemoaning official Saudi sponsorship of Wahhabism, and condemning official Iranian sponsorship of milleniarian Islam, we are now being asked to celebrate a state-sponsored brand of Islam in Pakistan. We are asked to believe this is "different" from those other cases solely because it's a version of the religion that looks benign. But not only is this unprincipled -- it is going to backfire, leaving Sufism discredited and more religious resentment among the numerous peaceful Salafis in the world.


--------------------------------
Ali Eteraz was an outstanding scholar at the U.S. Department of Justice and later worked in corporate litigation in Manhattan. He is the author of a forthcoming book about Pakistan and Islam titled Children of Dust.


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 Mesaj Başlığı: Re: Islamabad sees sufism as extremist antidote
MesajGönderilme zamanı: 20.08.09, 14:43 #mesajın linki (?)
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Pakistan must confront Wahhabism

As the Saudi-financed Wahhabi Islam supplants the tolerant indigenous Sufi Islam, its violent creed is inspiring terrorism

Adrian Pabst

20 August 2009



Despite the recent offensive by the Pakistani army in the Swat Valley and by Nato in Helmand province, the "Talibanisation" of both Afghanistan and Pakistan proceeds apace. Vast parts of the Afghan south and a large region in western Pakistan are still under de facto control of Taliban militants who enforce a violent form of sharia law.

Western responses oscillate between calls for a secular alternative to the religious fundamentalism of the Taliban and attempts to engage the moderate elements among them. Neither will solve the underlying religious clash between indigenous Sufi Islam and the Saudi-sponsored Wahhabi extremism. The UK and US must change strategy and adopt a policy that supports the peaceful indigenous Muslim tradition of Sufism while thwarting Saudi Arabia's promotion of the dangerous Wahhabi creed that fuels violence and sectarian tension.

As Afghanistan goes to the polls this week, western political and military leaders now recognise that stability and peace in the country cannot be created by military force alone. Like the "surge" strategy in Iraq which reduced suicide bombings by driving a wedge between indigenous Sunnis and foreign jihadists, the US and its European allies will try to separate the Taliban from al-Qaida fighters who infiltrate Afghanistan from across the border in Pakistan. By combining "surgical" strikes against terrorists in the Afghan-Pakistani border region with a political strategy aimed at "moderate" Taliban, President Obama hopes to save the US mission from disaster.

The problem is that those Taliban who would be prepared to talk have little leverage and those who have influence feel that they have little incentive to compromise, as they have gained the upper hand. Unlike many Sunnis in Iraq, most Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan have embraced the puritanical and fundamentalist Islam of the Wahhabi mullahs from Saudi Arabia who wage a ruthless war not just against western "infidels" but also against fellow Muslims they consider to be apostates, in particular the Sufis.

Sufi Islam is not limited to the southern Pakistani province of Sindh on the border with India. It also exists elsewhere in Pakistan and has been present in Afghanistan for centuries, as exemplified by the 18th-century poet and mystic Rahman Baba whose shrine at the foot of the Khyber Pass (linking Afghanistan and Pakistan) still attracts many Sufi faithful from both sides of the border.

All this changed in the 1980s when during the Afghan resistance against the Soviet invasion, elements in Saudi Arabia poured in money, arms and extremist ideology. Through a network of madrasas, Saudi-sponsored Wahhabi Islam indoctrinated young Muslims with fundamentalist Puritanism, denouncing Sufi music and poetry as decadent and immoral. At Attock, not far from Rahman Baba's shrine on the Khyber Pass, stands the Haqqania madrassa, one of the most radical schools where the Taliban leader Mullah Omar was trained. Across the Pakistani border, the tolerant Sufi-minded Barelvi form of indigenous Islam has also been supplanted by the hardline Wahhabi creed.

This madrassa-inspired and Saudi-financed Wahhabi Islam is destroying indigenous Islam in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Crucially, it is imposing a radical creed that represents a distortion and perversion of true Islam. Wahhabi followers beheaded a Polish geologist in February (as revenge for Polish troops in Afghanistan) and blew up a century-old shrine dedicated to Rahman Baba in the Pakistani town of Peshawar in March.

The actions of the west and its Afghan and Pakistani allies are making matters worse. By causing civilian deaths through aerial bombings, the US is driving ordinary Afghans and Pakistani into the arms of the jihadi terrorists. By declaring sharia law in Pakistan's northwestern Swat region to appease the local Taliban and by using Islamism in the ongoing conflict with India over Kashmir, Pakistan's government is emboldening the extremists and undermining Sufi Islam.

What is required, first of all, is to prevent Saudi Arabia from playing a duplicitous game whereby the authorities in Riyadh help the Afghan President Karzai in his attempts to woo moderate Taliban while promoting the violent creed of Wahhabism across this volatile region. The west should call Saudi Arabia's bluff and not surrender to Riyadh's threats of ending security co-operation and information exchange on international terrorism which thrives on Saudi-exported Wahhabi ideology.

The west and Muslim countries such as Jordan should also put pressure on the Pakistani authorities to confront Wahhabism by expelling Saudi hate preachers, closing the Wahhabi madrassas and establishing schools that teach the peaceful Islam of Sufism.

By itself this strategy will of course not be sufficient to eradicate violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But without an alternative policy based on religion, this religious conflict will further escalate.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... -terrorism


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 Mesaj Başlığı: Re: Islamabad sees sufism as extremist antidote
MesajGönderilme zamanı: 12.04.21, 14:43 #mesajın linki (?)
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Kayıt: 15.09.10, 09:02
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jaihoon yazdı:
Islamabad sees sufism as extremist antidote

Islamabad is set to combat the ongoing insurgency by spreading sufi thoughts and teachings across the violence-wracked country.

Government sources on Sunday announced setting up of a seven-member 'Sufi Advisory Council' (SAC) with an aim to combating extremism and fanaticism by spreading sufism in the country, Dawn News reported.

The SAC chairman and some of its members are said to be holding their first meeting at the ministry of religious affairs in Islamabad on Tuesday June 9.

The council will also invite what it calls progressive intellectuals in an effort to promote the flourishing of sufism.

It is not clear whether SAC will play a parallel role in the presence of Council of Islamic Ideology which is a constitutional body.

The decision comes as Islamabad and other major cities across Pakistan have been braced for suicide attacks since the army launched an offensive against the insurgents in the troubled northwestern Swat valley and its adjoining districts in early May.

Press TV


http://www.presstv.ir/classic/detail.aspx?id=97382§ionid=351020401


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