BY Nouran Hassan
After 9/11 incidents, a global discourse on ‘moderate Islam’ or Sufism has been promoted by many US think tanks to counter-balance the extreme interpretations accused of triggering the establishment of Al Qa’eda, a master to later Jihadist insurgencies. The call was warmly hosted by UAE politicians who have adopted long-standing policies to promote a ‘Sunni-Sufi-Ashari’ Islamism as opposed to the Saudi sponsored ideology — accused of providing safe-haven to 15 of the 19 Al-Qaeda hijackers. Meanwhile, the UAE had to take its part in the ‘War against Terrorism’ because two of its nationals were involved in the attack. To avail itself of similar accusation, H.H. Sheikh Bin Zayed decisively pursued a long-term policy to support scholastic Sufism that promotes apolitical, authority-friendly, non-violent Sufi discourse to counterfeit Jihadism, at first, and political Islamism- the Muslim Brotherhood- after 2011. The conception of Sufism[1] as contradictory to political mobilization, while gaining more grounds among youth circles as a ‘safe’ religious practice, justifies blood-fisted regimes and deforms a long history of Sufism as means to defend Muslim territories and people’s rights, maintain law and order, or run religious affairs and guide state authorities. This calls a need to first, examine the varied historical manifestations and roles played by Sufi orders and Ulema, covered in part (1), and presenting a critical reading of ‘modern Sufism’ promoted and established as contradictory to socio-political mobilization and human rights and freedoms, in part (2). It concludes with recommendations for political Islam to retrieve its legitimacy constituencies and reintroduce a revival of Sufi conceptions and narratives as a platform for political change.
Is Sufism an apolitical Islam?
In history and discourse, the view of domesticate Sufism is disputable in a range of cases where Sufi orders have followed varied stances and tactics toward colonialism, sectarian/tribal conflict, and anti-regime uprisings in the late 19th century and in today’s war-tormented Iraq.
In his article “Sufism and Colonialism”, Knut S. Vikor argues that Sufis, like Muslims in general, reacted in different ways to the advent of European forces that took control over Muslim lands. Most orders utilized force in the defense of Muslim-hood, political affiliation to the Ottoman Empire, or local human, financial, and material resources. A generalized rule about Sufism as docile or rebellious (violent), as French sources would categorize, is as misleading as an envision of absolutely non-violent Sufism in Western and regional foreign policies. Vikor examines several example of Sufism vis-à-vis colonial authorities. Both the Qadiriyya’s resistance to French occupation in western and central Algeria between 1832 and 1847 and their established political structures were initiated on basis of tribal and spiritual legitimacy of the father of amir al-mu’minin Adb al-Qadir who led Jihad as the ‘commander of the faithful’[2]. His case is comparable to another pacifist order, the Tijaniyya, that took hold of ‘Ain Madi’ oasis and was classified ‘friendly’ to French troop in Morocco and Algeria.
The Tijanis chose to stay away from political strife unlike ‘fulani jihads’ directed against local Muslim rulers and pagan kingdoms in West Africa, whose ‘jihad fi sabil Allah’ enabled their domination of political life in Muslim West Africa under leadership of al-Hajj Umar, who trained his students scholarly and militarily by mid-1850’s. When the French advanced to Hajj Umar’s territory he asked his supporters to withdraw from the enemy’s territory to Segu before the French eliminated his state in 1890 putting end to the old jihadist Sufi-political experience. Umar was a renowned scholar, a Tijani leader, a politician, and was recognized as leader of the Tijaniyya in southern Sahara[3]. His model loosely relates to the Sanusiyya’s Sufi-inspired jihad in today’s Chad and Libya that started as a society-oriented brotherhood to maintain peace between tribal entities that otherwise shared a history of bloody rivalry.[4] Vikor argues that the order developed its resistance towards the Cyrenaica war because the French falsely defined them as ‘dissident’ which later triggered Bedouin tribes’ support of the order against the ‘infidels’, the Italians, who invaded Tripolitania and Cyrenaica in 1911. The order provided cohesion and structure to the war especially after Italy had joined the Entente in the World War leading the Ottoman-German alliance to support the Sanusi order with weapons and material support before their defeat in 1916 by the British forces and replacement of the order’s leadership with a ‘friendly’ figure, Muhammad Idris, son of the former leader al-Mahdi. Idris maintained peace accords with the order and its tribal backing until 1922, when Mussolini assumed power and reclaimed effective take-over of Tripolitania. Eventually, tribal leaders and the Sanusis’ lodges united under ‘Umar al-Mukhtar’, a native of Cyrenaica, to defend the city. Umar al-Mukhtar was a Sufi, not a political/tribal, leader, and hence the order was effectively transformed into a ‘war machine’ which the Italians has targeted for nine years of intense fighting before al-Mukhtar was caught in 1931. Another example is the Rashidiya order, known as Dandarawiyya in Egypt, led by Abdilleh Hassan who preached social reform and fought against the British and the Italian arrivals unifying the Sudanese clans into a full-scale jihad in four years (1895–1899) and played on the colonial divisions in setting up a short-lived state that came to end by his death in 1920[5].
Examining these four cases, a determinant line between Sufism and peaceful domesticate socio-political entities can hardly stand to evidence. Sufism has given different reactions to colonial offenses. Adb al-Qadir led an anti-colonial political struggle using Sufi legitimacy but did not prescribe a spiritual identity of his state; the Sanusis were pushed into a Jihad thrust by circumstances, Vikor argues, just as the otherwise fully quietist Tijanis, led by Al-Hajj Umar, fought non-conforming Muslim and pagan rulers instead of colonial forces and Abdilleh’s sufi-political and social reform project materialized in a small state disowned by his own order and depended on his personal traditional authority which lacked long-standing political project. In all instances, Sufism was involved in political-military contention as a ‘reaction’ that, winning or not, garnered massive support in wars against invaders and in defense of Muslim identity, political independence, and people rights or sectarian interests.
The pattern is anew to even earlier Sufism that took part in expeditionary campaigns on Byzantine frontiers and stopped military assaults on Muslim main-lands. All ranks of Sufi scholars joined the Umayyads Caliphate’a (661–750) expedition on the Byzantine Frontiers[6]. In ‘Sifatu Safwa’, Ibn al-Jawzi[7] narrates about Sufi imams and leaders who stationed in cities and frontiers, joined the warriors in battles, and watched mountain passes and castle tops. Examples include Abdallah ibn al-Mubarak (d 181 AH/797 CE) whose military successes included many sojourns on the frontiers and combat of well-known enemy worriers all while authoring ‘the Book of Jihad’ which probably stands oldest to many subsequent works[8]. Biographical notices of al-Mubarak highlight his personal self-control, which developed into ‘Book of ascetism ‘Zuhd’ gaining wide circulation in Muslim Andalusia. His example comes second to Ibrahim Ibn Adham )d.161 AH/777 CE) [9] who mobilized Sufi scholar/ascetics and developed the idea of martyrdom being the best way to constitute the Muslim community out of the striving of individual believers and their search for personal salvation[10]. Ibn al-Adham’s legacy materialized in describing his community as ‘Devotees of tough practice’ whose activities included “extreme fasting, ingesting dust or clay, and rigorous insisting on working for a living (kasb)”[11]. Hence, its evident that scholar Sufis did join wars on the Muslim frontiers starting from the eighth century[12].
In the third Hijri millennium, hundreds of Sufi volunteers were involved in the mobilization for Jihad, urging rulers to take preemptive expeditions, stationing their ‘zawaya’ and educating their students in coastal frontiers and mountain passageways, and launching rhetorical tirades against enemies to energize Muslim soldiers. Following earlier samples, history reports about Hatem al-Asam (d. 237 AH/851 AD) who died in his station on a mountain passageway protecting Muslim mainland; Yazid al-Bistami (d. 261 AH/848 AD) known as ‘Sultan of Sufists’, who posted himself at either a mosque or a military station for forty years[13]; Abu Hamza al-Sufi (d. 269 AH/882 AD) whom Imam al-Junaid had praised for “join(ing) expeditions with his Sufi cloth”; Al-Sary al-Saqaty (d. 253 AH/867 AD), to whom most Sufi orders refer, and his nephew Imam Al Junaid (d.297AH/910 AD), a well-known Sufi scholar and ‘ the Imam of his time’ as Ibn al-Atheer describes[14]; both joined Jihad expeditions and defended Muslim territories.
Source : Medium.com
Read the original article here : Refrence