Word: sufism
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...precision they've learned to apply on the job to hard drives or computer models. In his recent book about life inside Hizb ut-Tahrir, British Muslim Ed Husain contrasts the aggressive, intolerant Islam he found in Hizb ut-Tahrir to the "Islam of the heart," the tolerant, humanistic Sufism of his migrant parents. In modern Islamic radicalism, custom and humanism are jettisoned in favor of logic and politics. Hizb ut-Tahrir, which targets youth on college campuses, promotes itself as the thinking Muslim's alternative to blindly following parents, mullahs or tradition...
...Founded by Guru Nanak in northern India during the 15th century, Sikhism drew from Sufism, Islam and Hinduism, but rejected what it saw as their worst traditions, such as the Hindu caste system. It later incorporated the teachings of nine other Gurus, or teachers, which are collected in the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy book revered as the eleventh Guru. The religion claims 23 million followers today, 76 percent of whom live in the Indian state of Punjab. Although they make up only 2% of the wider Indian population, they are a close-knit and prosperous community with a strong...
...Then there is Dhani's self-professed interest in Sufism. The Sufis make up a mystical branch of Islam that conservative Muslims dismiss as unconventional at best, and deviant at worst. "The fact that he is a Sufi is already going to be controversial with most Indonesian Muslims," says Hamid Basyaib, director of the Liberal Islam Network, a Jakarta-based organization promoting a moderate version of Islam. So will Dhani's admission that he does not pray five times a day-one of the religion's cardinal commands. Says Shofwan Chairul of the University of Indonesia's Islamic Students Association...
...Sufism has deep roots in Sudanese culture, and its influence is strikingly at odds with the oppressive Islamist political ideology that has long fueled conflict here. In the early 1990s, Sudan counted itself among the most rigid Islamist governments in the world: Riot police tear-gassed overly festive wedding parties, and the regime's determination to impose its harsh version of sharia law on the more Christian South helped to drag out the war. Its chief ideologue, Hassan al-Turabi, notoriously helped to radicalize Osama bin Laden during his years living in Khartoum...
...Even al-Turabi himself eventually fell afoul of the authorities, finding himself imprisoned by a regime that stamped out political opponents and critical voices. But the Islamists have not dared to interfere with Sufism. Apolitical and non-confrontational by its very nature, it offers a form of resistance that is harder to break. "Sufism is part and parcel of life in Sudan," says Gasim Badri, who heads a liberal women's university in Omdurman. "Even now, after 18 years in power, they have been unable to change the Sudanese people...