Word: islamics
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...that is why some lament the decline of another, older and more tolerant Islam. For centuries many of the world's Muslims were, in one way or another, practi-tioners of Sufism, a spiritualism that centers on the mystical connection between the individual and the divine. Sufism's ethos was egalitarian, charitable and friendly, often propagated by wandering seers and storytellers. It blended with local cultures and cemented Islam's place from North Africa to the Indian subcontinent. (Read "An Islam of Many Paths...
...amid the hurly-burly of 19th century empires, Sufism lost ground. The fall of Islam's traditional powers - imperial dynasties such as the Mughals and the Ottomans - created a hunger for a more muscular religious identity than that found in the intoxicating whirl of a dervish or the quiet wisdom of a sage. Nationalism and fundamentalism subdued Sufism's eclectic spirit. In the West, Sufism now usually provokes paeans to an alternative, ascetic life, backed up perhaps by a few verses from Rumi, a medieval Sufi poet much cherished by New Age spiritualists. But there was nothing fringe or alternative...
...harness" Sufism, saying its adherents were "natural allies of the West." Along similar lines, the Algerian government announced in July that it would promote the nation's Sufi heritage on radio and television in a bid to check the powerful influence of Salafism, a more extreme strain of Islam that is followed by al-Qaeda-backed militants waging a war against the country's autocratic state...
...Sufism really bend terrorist swords into plowshares? The question is most urgent in South Asia, home to more than a third of the world's Muslims and the cradle of Sufi Islam. Shrines of Sufi saints are ubiquitous in India and Pakistan and still attract thousands of devotees. Yet the Taliban in Pakistan have set about destroying such sites, which are anathema to their literalist interpretation of the Koran. "Despite our ancient religious tradition," says Ayeda Naqvi, a writer and Sufi scholar from Lahore, "we are being bullied and intimidated by a new form of religion that is barely...
...Hindu theology, and famously walked the streets of Lahore and Delhi naked, denouncing corrupt nobles and clerics. In 1661, he was arrested for heresy and beheaded under the orders of the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, a ruler admired now by Pakistani hard-liners for his championing of an orthodox Islam and the destruction of hundreds of Hindu temples. As Sarmad was led to his execution, he was heard to mutter lines of poetry: "There was an uproar, and we opened our eyes from eternal sleep," intoned the Sufi. "Saw that the night of wickedness endured, so we slept again." For many...