Word: sufis
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...India's deviation from secularism has not diluted the faith Kashmiris have in it. Their moderate Sufi-based culture and value system is still the predominant ethic despite their persecution. One of the more startling findings of the Nielsen poll was that more than 95% of the valley's Muslims found the ethnic cleansing that drove Kashmiri Hindus out in the '90s repugnant; they wanted to see this authentic Kashmiri Hindu community resettled. This is a view with serious political implications, since a return of the Hindu population means renewal of a plural society. Of course, plenty of Kashmiri Muslims...
...refusing to participate in elections has achieved precious little, say many former militants. They also complain that what was once an indigenous freedom struggle has been usurped by Pakistani militants whose pan-Islamic ideals and fundamentalism are at odds with this fight for self-rule and with the moderate Sufi Islam of the Valley. The foreigners, Indian intelligence sources claim, number half of the 2,500 militants in the area...
...Despite periodic vandalism, theft and iconoclasm, Bamiyan's Buddhas survived for nearly 18 centuries. Genghis Khan did not touch them?he was quite tolerant of other religions. The Shia Muslim Hazara who live in the valley protected them, and adherents of Sufi Islam, a mystical sect with a wide following in Afghanistan, see echoes of Buddhism in their own practices. But last March, Taliban commanders flew in by helicopter. A public meeting was called, and the main speaker, then-Defense Minister Obaidullah Akhund?who reportedly surrendered to the new government last week and was set free?read a decree...
...counterculture what France was to the Lost Generation of the 1920s--a place to find your bliss on an agreeable currency-exchange rate--Julia has dragged her kids from chilly London to sunny Marrakech, where she vaguely hopes to achieve spiritual transcendence by linking up with the mystical Sufi sect. Unfortunately, the support checks from the girls' faraway father arrive only erratically. Julia takes up with a sometime acrobat named Bilal (Said Taghmaoui), whose charm is matched by his fecklessness. They are all blown this way and that by minor mishaps, passing acts of grace, and the suspense...
...some cases, previous attempts to impose fundamentalist law have taken bizarre forms. When a mullah named Maulana Sufi Mohammed decided to enforce strict Shari'a law in his mountain valley near the Afghan border, he prohibited driving on the left side of the road because the left hand is deemed unclean. Numerous car crashes failed to deter him. Inspired by the Taliban's medieval puritanism, mullahs in northwest Pakistan are destroying TVs and setting up roadblocks to stop cars and rip out music cassettes...