The Muslims in the Middle

[elleng]

Most of us are perfectly capable of making distinctions within the Christian world. The fact that someone is a Boston Roman Catholic doesn’t mean he’s in league with Irish Republican Army bomb makers, just as not all Orthodox Christians have ties to Serbian war criminals or Southern Baptists to the murderers of abortion doctors.

Yet many of our leaders have a tendency to see the Islamic world as a single, terrifying monolith. Had the George W. Bush administration been more aware of the irreconcilable differences between the Salafist jihadists of Al Qaeda and the secular Baathists of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the United States might never have blundered into a disastrous war, and instead kept its focus on rebuilding post-Taliban Afghanistan while the hearts and minds of the Afghans were still open to persuasion.

Feisal Abdul Rauf of the Cordoba Initiative is one of America’s leading thinkers of Sufism, the mystical form of Islam, which in terms of goals and outlook couldn’t be farther from the violent Wahhabism of the jihadists. His videos and sermons preach love, the remembrance of God (or “zikr”) and reconciliation. His slightly New Agey rhetoric makes him sound, for better or worse, like a Muslim Deepak Chopra. But in the eyes of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, he is an infidel-loving, grave-worshiping apostate; they no doubt regard him as a legitimate target for assassination.

For such moderate, pluralistic Sufi imams are the front line against the most violent forms of Islam.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/opinion/17dalrymple.html?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fopinion%2Findex.jsonp

[T Wolf]

1. It is much easier and plays better to Idiot Amerika to simply group them all together in the

terrorist category.

Thinking is not their strong point.

[Igel]

2. Sufism itself is not monolithic.

It's rather hard to define, actually (although adherents always have a quick and easy answer, usually which says that they're defining examples of Sufis).

Many Sufis have been no less antagonistic to non-Muslims than Wahhabis are today. The primary difference is that while you don't accord the infidels dignity, you don't make a point of actively oppressing them.

"I know many X, and while I wouldn't talk to them unless necessary I guess they can be allowed to live in relative peace. As long as they mind their place and let me get on becoming as perfect as I can." There are the faithful and the infidels: Infidels deserve no respect, they are utterly corrupt and may not even easily be able to convert without a lot of help from the purest among the faithful. Jim Crowe, writ large, for that group of Sufis. (Yet we consider this often to represent great tolerance and moderation. Odd.)

Then there are Sufis that are universalists, who look for inspiration in the Tibetan Book of the Dead and wherever else they think they can find it.

These two groups are at the extreme. Both are Sufis. Both pretty much deny that each other is Sufi (well, the latter, universalists that they are, would just say the former is misguided). The former deny that the latter is even Muslim and some Sufi masters of that ilk called for killing apostate Muslims (think "Ahmadiyya").

Some quote the hard-line Sufis' writings to try to show they were also very modern and enlightened. They cherry pick and misconstrue. In similar fashion, I once heard an idiot 7th-day-sabbath keeper argue that the Pilgrims and Puritans kept a Saturday sabbath as a matter of course. Why? Because in their writings they used the word "Sabbath," and that has to be the 7th day, and that's Saturday. Blinded by her own brilliance, that one was.

[elleng]

4. Kind of like Christianity? and Judaism?

'while you don't accord the infidels dignity, you don't make a point of actively oppressing them.'

'pretty much deny that each other is'

'cherry pick and misconstrue'

What IS it about human beans???

[John Q. Citizen]

6. Everybody is somebody's weirdo

[BrklynLiberal]

8. Excellent points..

[BrklynLiberal]

7. from the article..

For such moderate, pluralistic Sufi imams are the front line against the most violent forms of Islam. In the most radical parts of the Muslim world, Sufi leaders risk their lives for their tolerant beliefs, every bit as bravely as American troops on the ground in Baghdad and Kabul do. Sufism is the most pluralistic incarnation of Islam — accessible to the learned and the ignorant, the faithful and nonbelievers — and is thus a uniquely valuable bridge between East and West.

The great Sufi saints like the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi held that all existence and all religions were one, all manifestations of the same divine reality. What was important was not the empty ritual of the mosque, church, synagogue or temple, but the striving to understand that divinity can best be reached through the gateway of the human heart: that we all can find paradise within us, if we know where to look. In some ways Sufism, with its emphasis on love rather than judgment, represents the New Testament of Islam.

[BrklynLiberal]

3. I signed on to post this article...It is an essential piece of writing that needs to be read.

Your last paragraph was going to be my first...

<snip>

Feisal Abdul Rauf of the Cordoba Initiative is one of America’s leading thinkers of Sufism, the mystical form of Islam, which in terms of goals and outlook couldn’t be farther from the violent Wahhabism of the jihadists. His videos and sermons preach love, the remembrance of God (or “zikr”) and reconciliation. His slightly New Agey rhetoric makes him sound, for better or worse, like a Muslim Deepak Chopra.
But in the eyes of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, he is an infidel-loving, grave-worshiping apostate; they no doubt regard him as a legitimate target for assassination.

For such moderate, pluralistic Sufi imams are the front line against the most violent forms of Islam. In the most radical parts of the Muslim world, Sufi leaders risk their lives for their tolerant beliefs, every bit as bravely as American troops on the ground in Baghdad and Kabul do. Sufism is the most pluralistic incarnation of Islam — accessible to the learned and the ignorant, the faithful and nonbelievers — and is thus a uniquely valuable bridge between East and West.

The great Sufi saints like the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi held that all existence and all religions were one, all manifestations of the same divine reality. What was important was not the empty ritual of the mosque, church, synagogue or temple, but the striving to understand that divinity can best be reached through the gateway of the human heart: that we all can find paradise within us, if we know where to look. In some ways Sufism, with its emphasis on love rather than judgment, represents the New Testament of Islam.

While the West remains blind to the divisions and distinctions within Islam, the challenge posed by the Sufi vision of the faith is not lost on the extremists. This was shown most violently on July 2, when the Pakistani Taliban organized a double-suicide bombing of the Data Darbar, the largest Sufi shrine in Lahore, Pakistan’s second-largest city. The attack took place on a Thursday night, when the shrine was at its busiest; 42 people were killed and 175 were injured.

<snip>

If anything, we should be welcoming Imam Rauf with open arms and encouraging more like him to join in the battle against the jihadists.
From his backpedaling, I would guess that even President Obama may not be aware of the information in this article.

I find that very sad and very frightening. President Obama should have been endorsing this kind of action, not half-heartedly letting it just stand there alone and unprotected.

[Karenina]

5. . .