Iran is the country in which the Muslim intellectual tradition is most identified with Sufism, the spiritual dimension of Islam -- including such exponents in poetry and philosophy as Rumi, often reputed to be the widest-read versifier in America today. But as reported by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on Sept. 7, the Iranian clerical establishment has increased a repressive campaign against the Nimatullahi-Gonabadi mystics -- more commonly referred to as "dervishes" -- who make up one of the largest Sufi groups in the country.
The Nimatullahi dervishes, of which the Gonabadis are a branch, began centuries ago as Sunni Muslims but became Shiite Muslim believers during their journey toward intimacy with God -- the goal of all Sufis. Recent state aggression against them commenced in 2006, but was aggravated by the Iranian electoral controversy that began in 2009. RFE/RL's coverage was confirmed by bulletins from the news portal Inside of Iran on Sept. 6 and by monitors such as the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran on Sept. 7.
So far, one Gonabadi dervish, Vahid Banani, has died of a gunshot wound, with at least three more injured by gunfire. Their names are Ibrahim Fazli, Asghar Karimi and Mohammad Ali Saadi. All four came from the town of Sarvestan, about 50 miles southeast of Shiraz, capital of the southwestern province of Fars. A funeral for "the martyr Vahid Banani" was held in Sarvestan on Sept. 8, with the participation of many dervishes as well as local residents, although security forces had blocked roads into the town. But the burial took place without conflict.
Up to 60 people have been rounded up in different locations. Shops and homes owned by Nimatullahi-Gonabadi acolytes have been destroyed in the town of Kovar, also near Shiraz in Fars province. Kovar is said to be surrounded by security and military patrols. Sufis attempting to enter Kovar have been stopped, with their identity papers confiscated.
The most recent government action against the Nimatullahi-Gonabadi followers began in Kars province on Saturday, Sept. 3. The combined reports say the Sufis were detained without warrants, and assaulted by government operatives in plain-clothes and members of the Basij paramilitary volunteers.
According to Inside of Iran, early on Sunday, Sept. 4, high school teacher Gholam Reza Shirazi and two lawyers for the dervishes, Amir Islami and Afshin Kharampour, were summoned to Kovar's government headquarters, but were arrested when they arrived there.
A Nimatullahi-Gonabadi website, Majzooban Nour, states that nine people involved in running the site were jailed in Tehran, the Iranian capital, during a raid on Monday, Sept. 5, and that another lawyer for the Sufis, Farshid Yadollahi, was incarcerated on Sept. 11, while more detentions of adherents to the order are taking place.
The whereabouts of most of the imprisoned dervishes are unknown. The three surviving gunshot victims, Ibrahim Fazli, Asghar Karimi and Mohammad Ali Saadi, had been under care at the Shiraz Rajai hospital, but Fazli has reportedly been transferred to an undisclosed location.
In an interview with the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, Seyed Mustafa Azmayesh, international spokesperson for the Nimatullahi-Gonabadi Sufis, and international relations director of the International Organization to Protect Human Rights in Iran (IOPHRI), said that the repressive actions began in Kovar, but were aimed at dervishes throughout the country. Azmayesh said that anti-Sufi "missionaries" from the ranks of the Basij had been trained in the Shiite seminary of Qom by a special "Commission to Combat Emerging and Pseudo-Spiritual Beliefs" under the direction of the powerful Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, head of the Iranian judicial system from 1989 to 1999.
The gunshot victims in Kovar numbered six, according to Azmayesh. He charged that a preacher named Shahbazi had toured the suburbs of Shiraz, as well as Kovar and Sarvestan, denouncing the Sufis. According to the U.S.-subsidized Radio Farda, which broadcasts in Persian, the national language of Iran, groups that attacked the mystics chanted "death to American dervishes." Such agitation resembles similar propaganda heard previously in Iran, as well as in Arab countries like Egypt, where Sufism has been depicted as a tool of American policy.
Azmayesh, however, ascribed the current repression to conflicts in Iranian ruling circles, with followers of the clerical hardliners in Qom moving against the dervishes because of support the Sufis gave to Mehdi Karroubi, one of the leading opposition candidates in the 2009 Iranian presidential elections, who has defended their rights.
The situation of the Sufis in Iran is complex and unfortunate, not least because every attempt to publicize their plight or assist them from outside the country, and especially by American sympathizers, is manipulated by the regime to further attack them.
On first hearing of Sufism, people may imagine that all Sufis meditate by turning on one foot in the ecstatic exercise associated with Rumi. Sufis throughout the world study sacred texts and practice "remembrance of God" in many differing ways, some aloud, some silent, some by physical movements in collective observances, some in stillness and solitude. But Sufis in Muslim countries -- not only in Iran -- are associated with resistance to injustice, and some of the most famous of the Persian Sufis, including Mansur Al-Hallaj, who lived in the ninth to 10th centuries, and Shihab Ad-Din Suhrawardi, who introduced "eastern wisdom" to Islam during the 12th century, were both executed for alleged heresy. The acts of oppression visited on the Nimatullahi-Gonabadi Sufis in Iran today are, perhaps predictably, not without precedents in Islamic history.
Stephen Schwartz: Islamic Sufism and Jewish Kabbalah: Shining a Light on Their Hidden History
Ni'matullāhī - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
BBC NEWS | Middle East | Growing popularity of Sufism in Iran
Iran Escalates Repression Against Sufis | The Weekly Standard
For instance, in 2006 Faizul Aqtab Siddiqi, leader of a Naqshbandi order helped to organize a number of belligerent and violent protests against Danish cartoonists..
In a political struggle between Sufi and secularist humanism I would unreservedly would support secular humanism-- the best and only hope for humankind to survive, raise its consciousness level and understand the universe we live in.
In any struggle within Islamist groups and factions I'd stay out and as far out as possible.
But don't you think that your first sentence contradicts the second?
Sufi, the enemy of the Ayatollah Islam, can be a temporary ally of the West.
Be free, free youself from religion, it's just a burden. If you can't do that, free yourself for a year and see how your life improves because you have gained your sovereignty back.
Religions are the most common cause of war, that should be enough to lead a religionfree life, everywhere.
"The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity."-- Alan Watts
There's also room to reject this constant and anxious trawling for converts. Surely.
The world would benefit infinitely more from Zen Buddhism or Taoism.
Either you're provinces, or someone else's province!
When the Iranian mystic Mowllana Jallal-E-Din known as Rumi died the Jews and Christians in Konia joined the procession. Rumi's followers complained to Sultan Valid (Rumi's son). He asked their leaders how come they want to morn the death of a Muslim saint.
The Jews said, "When read the Mathnavi, we understand Moses more than when we read the Torah," and the Christians added, "When we read the Devan, we love Isa more than when we read the Engil."
So Sultan Valid welcomed them and let some be among the pal bearers.
I left some of the words in the original Persian of the above story (not necessarily historically true but written by one of Rumi's followers within twenty years of his death so much more truthful than the bible). Mathnavi and Divan-E-Shams-E-Tabrizi are two of Rumi's greatest works and the Engil is Persian word for the Gospels.
But the problem here isn't their lack of religious correctness - it's the Iranian government's practice of killing and imprisoning people because of their religion. That has no place in a civilized society, and if you think it does, you're no better than the Islamophobes in US right-wing politics and as bad as the radical secularists who ran Turkey. Furthermore, if you think your religion tells you to kill infidels, you're skipping the good parts of a religion of peace and love and righteousness.
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The problem goes deeper than that.
"4- To remove all polytheism from the Arabian Peninsula, which is considered a free and pure nation for Islam and its citizens. Therefore it is a special stronghold for Islam, whose protection is not shared with anyone.
http://www.translatingjihad.com/2011/06/al-qaradawi-moderate-muslims-accept.html
"It has been narrated by 'Umar b. al-Khattib that he heard the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) say: I will expel the Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula and will not leave any but Muslim."
Book 019, Number 4363
“You should know that the earth belongs to Allah and His Apostle”
http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/muslim/019.smt.html#019.4363
Any Muslim who believes in this Sharia doctrine of Islamic political sovereignty through jihad is part of the problem.
http://www.sullivan-county.com/wcva/sufism.htm
Since the Qur'an and Saheeh Hadith cannot be changed, the Sufi's have reverted to Ta'weel, a method of changing the apparent meaning of the verse or hadith to have a hidden one. This provided them with sufficient lee-way to support any concept they desired, by simply stating that the verse/hadith had an inner meaning which only the Sheikh himself could know.
In the Bezels of Wisdom, Ibn Arabi presents certain aspects of what he terms "Divine Wisdom," as he conceives it. But Ibn al-Arabi interprets the relevant verses of Surat Noah in the most outrageous fashion, since he suggests meanings diametrically opposed to those accepted by all Muslim scholars. He interprets the "wrongdoe," "infidels," and "sinners" in Surat Noah as 'saints and Gnostics' drowning and burning not in the torment of Hell, but rather in the flames and water of knowledge of God. Ibn Arabi regarded the idols worshipped by Noah's people as divine deities. Allah condemned their deed saying: "And they (Noah's people) said, 'Do not abandon your gods, neither Wad, Suwa', Yaghooth, Ya'ooq nor Nasr'. " [71: 23]
Sufis defend Islam while Islam attacks them.
http://www.sullivan-county.com/wcva/sufism.htm
The word Sufi is most likely to be derived from the Arabic word "soof", meaning wool.
Ibn Taymiyyah said: "There are a people who have chosen and preferred the wearing of woolen clothes, claiming that they want to resemble al-Maseeh ibn Maryam. But the way of our Prophet is more beloved to us, and the Prophet used to wear cotton and other garments."
Although it began as a move towards excessive Ibaadah, such practices were doomed to lead to corruption, since their basis did not come from authentic religious doctrines, but rather from exaggerated human emotions.
By examining the mystic doctrines of Christianity, Hinduism, Taoism and other religions, it becomes clear how closer Sufism is to these religions than to Islam. In fact, Sufism is never characterised under "Islam" in any system of catalogue, but rather under 'Mysticism'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufism
according to Idries Shah, the Sufi philosophy is universal in nature, its roots predating the rise of Islam and the other modern-day religions, save for perhaps Buddhism and Jainism; likewise, some Muslims consider Sufism outside the sphere of Islam.
Scholars and adherents of Sufism are unanimous in agreeing that Sufism cannot be learned through books. To reach the highest levels of success in Sufism typically requires that the disciple live with and serve the teacher for many, many years.
- How easy it is to use such descriptions. comments based upon facts are not bigoted, it is called the truth. There are reasons that you are persecuted by muslims and ignoring these facts will not change the anything.
In actuality, the mullahs' regime currently ruling Iran is guilty of crimes and severe oppression not just against the Sufis -- but against all religious communities perceived by that demented regime as "apostats". Among those communities are the Baha'i, whose ordinary members are severely persecuted by the mullahs' regime. The leaders of Iran's Baha'i community have been arrested and some were executed.
Both the international Baha'i community ( see http://news.bahai.org/human-rights/iran/the-bahai-question.html) and NGO's such as Amnesty International (see www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/iranian-bahai-leaders-hit-vindictive-sentence-extension-2011-03-31) have protested against these crimes -- but the media has largely (and shamefully) remained indifferent.
It is time for this criminal regime to be unmasked in all its ugliness and outlawed.
Generally speaking, the Sufi Orders are paths of peace, love and enlightenment.
So it pains me when even the Sufi Muslims are painted with the same brush as those currents within Islam that are destructive, such as Wahhabism/Salafism.
Suggested reading on Sufi Islam:
1. "The Elements of Sufism" by Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri
2. "Sufi Essays" by Seyyed Hossein Nasr
3. "Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi" by William Chittick [Rumi's poetry is essentially considered a commentary on the Qur`an]
4. "Sufism: A Beginner's Guide" by William Chittick
5. "Witnessing Perfection" by Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri
6. "Introduction to Sufi Doctrine" by Titus Burckhardt
7. "What is Sufism" by Martin Lings
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NOTE: I have posted as "tolerant" before.
I was concerned about keeping my comments short.
You have in fact shown a great wisdom in correcting me, for which I appreciate you very much.
Many thanks for that.
A couple of years ago, I attempted to read "Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn Al-Arabi's Metaphysics of Imagination" by William Chittick.
It's essentially a translation of Ibn Arabi's works and I found it to be very dense.
So, the beginners might benefit from reading his "Ibn 'Arabi -- Heir to the Prophets" first.
Take care,
tolerant
Most people do not know that the right wing Khomeini was not a Grand Ayatollah in 1963 when the US imposed dictator the Shah decided to execute him. He was elevated to the position of Grand Ayatollah and at the same time the CIA (the puppet masters) ordered the Shah not to execute Khomeini.
The Machiavellian CIA backed Khomeini was brought to power when the imperial forces (USA, UK) understood the Shah had to be replaced.
We (the West( do not want Democracy in oil rich areas of the world - corrupt governments are much easier for BP Exxon/Mobile to deal with.
That's why in the past we have supported fundamentalist Islam. Remember the Wahabbi Osama Bin Laden was radicalized by and was a tool of the CIA in the "good Jihad: against the Godless Soviets in Afghanistan.
If you have been around these blogs lately, you will have realized that there are many who think Islam is wonderful. I suggest we leave the problem for them to solve.