I am sometimes astounded by how much mis-information some people, Muslims and non-Muslims, place on the branch of Islam known as Tasawwuf. That’s right, no matter what some left or right-wing Muslim evangelicals might insist, Tasawwuf has always been an indispensable part of Islam. Like the other branches of knowledge like jurisprudence (fiqh) or Quranic exegesis (tafsir), ‘ilm al Tasawwuf was, in the words of Imam Abu’l-Hasan Bushanji,
…a reality without a name.
In the west, we call the practitioners of Tassawwuf Sufis. But the west also has a bad habit of divorcing Sufism from Islam itself, setting Sufism out to be a peaceful, and more importantly pacifist alternative to oh-so-militant Islam. This is a foolish idea. Sufism did not rise as a response to militarism, but in reaction to excessive legalism; a disease that is familiar to most Christians in the form of the Pharisees described in the Gospels. From the first, Sufism attempted to temper the cold, dispassionate sword of the law with love and mercy, a trait that the Prophet Muhammad, more than anyone else, had embodied. It encouraged Muslims to grasp the inner realities of seemingly monotonous rituals and reach a state of supreme certainty on the all-encompassing unity of God, instead of only going through the motions. In Mystical Dimensions of Islam, Annemarie Schimmel correctly identifies Sufism as nothing more spectacular than an interiorization of Islam.
Nonetheless, pacifism is hardly an attribute I would pin on Sufism. Not so many decades ago, many of the resistance movements against the oppressive colonialists of France (in Algeria) and Russia (in Chechnya) were led by out-and-out Sufis.
The exploits of one Imam Shamil so awed the Russian generals who fought against him, that upon his capture, he was brought to Saint Petersburg to meet the Tsar. The greatest testimony to the Tsar’s positive impression of Imam Shamil was in granting Imam Shamil’s desire to retire to Mecca. Along this arduous trip to the birthplace of his beloved Prophet, he was acclaimed and hailed by throngs of people. His nobility and fame had spread beyond the mountains he had given up half his life to defend. When he died, he was given the greatest honor of being buried amongst the first martyrs of Islam in the revered Jannatul Baqi cemetery.
I would concede one difference between Sufi ‘militants’ like Imam Shamil and today’s breed. Where the Sufis had rigorously shunned the brutal methods of war employed by their oppressors, today’s militants have embraced them in unprecedented and creative ways. 9-11 was merely one example out of a giant cauldron.
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A really interesting read.