Sufis' In Saudi Arabia
SUFISM IN SÀUDI ARABIA
There’s not much love in the eyes of the
low-level Saudi official clapping me into
leg irons. And in the dank jail of the
police station on the outskirts of Mecca,
the mood is anything but playful. My
accuser stands rigid at the open doorway
leading out onto the midnight streets of
the city’s suburbs. “So you’re a Sufi,” he’d
barked at me minutes earlier, labelling
me a member of the mystical Islamic sect
that values a personal relationship with
God over blind obedience to the Koran.
I’m not, but that didn’t seem to matter
much to my gaoler. I’d been picked up at
the funeral of 60-year-old Sheik
Mohammed Alawi al-Malki, Saudi
Arabia’s leading Sufi, whose sudden death
from complications arising from diabetes
had sent shock waves through his
community. A foreigner with a camera,
mingling with members of a sect
considered heathens by more rigid
Islamists, was enough to arouse suspicion.
My four hours in detention was only a
small taste of what Saudi Arabia’s Sufis
have endured over the past two centuries.
Brutally persecuted by the puritanical
Wahhabis, Sufis were, until recently,
barely considered citizens. It’s still illegal
to possess Sufi literature — a crime
punishable by death — or practise the
meditation rituals at the heart of Sufism’s
spiritual belief system. But as Saudi
Arabia faces increasing pressure to
reform, things are loosening up.
Moderates are now edging forward, and
the Sufis, forced underground for so
many decades, are raising a bit of a
ruckus.
“A couple of years ago, you couldn’t even
say the word Sufi in Saudi Arabia,” Sheik
Abbas Alawi al Malki, Sheik Mohammed’s
56-year-old brother and potential
successor, told me. The funeral was a
benchmark for the future, he explained
from one of the libraries at his home,
adjacent to the family’s majlis , or
assembly hall, in Mecca. Driven by grief,
his brother’s admirers — Sunnis, Shias
and Sufis alike — came together to
embrace and weep. Most astonishingly,
Crown Prince Abdullah, the de facto ruler
of the kingdom, paid his respects, and
even referred to Sheik Mohammed as the
scholar of Mecca.
Sheik Mohammed, a professor of sharia
law and hadith (a collection of the sayings
of the prophet) at Mecca’s Sharia College,
was, of course, well-respected in some
circles. But what made the crown prince’s
presence striking is that the sheik, as an
avowed Sufi, had been banned by Saudi
Arabia’s conservative religious
establishment from teaching in the holy
sanctuary in Mecca, and branded an
infidel by many of the conservative
scholars in the country and abroad.
“Prince Abdullah’s visit was like a green
light for the moderate line of religious
practice in Saudi Arabia,” Sheik Abbas
proclaimed.
Today, Sufis are meeting and discussing
their future in Saudi Arabia in growing
numbers. A June 2004 assembly on
religious reforms in the kingdom,
organized by the monarchy, was attended
by Sheik Mohammed, openly representing
the Sufi movement. “It was amazing,” his
brother remembered. “He sat between
the Sunni and Shia representatives, like a
mediator.”
If any Muslim sect can help bridge the
burgeoning divide not only within Islam
but also with the West, it may be Sufism.
Like other Muslims, Sufis believe prayer
and fasting are important practices that
bring a person closer to God. But they
accept that a long series of prophets and
saints, including Jesus and Buddha, also
hold keys to divine knowledge. The Sufi
world view blurs the distinction between
Muslim and Christian, Jew and Hindu.
“The majority of people in the world are
Sufis, even if they don’t call themselves
that,” Ameen Rayes, Sheik Mohammed’s
42-year-old nephew, told me. “The path
of peace and moderation, the path of
love, that is the Sufi path.”
Repaving that path with a modern finish
is the challenge facing Saudi Arabia’s Sufi
community. “Mecca and Medina represent
the heart of Islam,” says Sami Angawi, an
architect and unrepentant Sufi. “Diversity
needs to be brought back to these cities
for Islam to begin its process of
rehabilitation.” He’s the founder of the
Amar Center, a Jeddah-based organization
dedicated to preserving Saudi Arabia’s
Islamic heritage. To Angawi, historical
sites are important, although his vision is
at odds with that of the clerics. They have
no use for anything they believe distracts
a Muslim from his duties to God’s divine
law, especially religious monuments. The
clerical establishment is pouring money
into building religious schools around the
world to spread their version of Islam and
limiting their restoration efforts to
expanding the pilgrimage sites at Mecca
and Medina. But as for others? “Ninety
per cent of the country’s significant
religious sites are gone,” Angawi laments.
The list includes some startlingly relevant
structures, including the house of the
Prophet Mohammed in Medina, which
Angawi tried unsuccessfully to save.
“Imagine,” he says, “if someone
uncovered the house where Jesus held the
last supper, only to rip it out. Would the
Christian world stand for it?” What has
been lost cuts to the core of his Sufi soul.
Sufis around the world flock to religious
sites, from the graves of saints to places
considered sacred for the role they played
in the spiritual awakenings of various
sheiks. While he is careful not to link
these sites with acts of worship, as Islam
is adamant that worship be reserved for
Allah alone, Angawi insists they are
important sources of spiritual strength
and renewal. But Muslims in Saudi Arabia
face being branded polytheists, another
crime punishable by death, if they argue
for their preservation.
In fact, Saudi Arabia’s hardline clerics
have adopted a familiar tack: appropriate
all knowledge by eradicating any vestiges
of past perspectives. The tactic has been
used before. As renowned Muslim
philosopher Ziauddin Sardar elegantly
argues in his 1992 essay, “The Making and
Unmaking of Islamic Culture,” “It was the
inner urge to know that transformed
Islam from its desert origins into a world
civilization.” At its height, Islamic culture
led the world in the pursuit of
knowledge. The decline, argues Sardar,
began when the concept of knowledge
was hijacked by a select few religious
scholars eager to assert their authority,
and narrowly redefined to be religious
knowledge.
But now, Sufi reformers such as Angawi
and Sheik Abbas are trying to broaden
the concept once again. “Knowledge
comes first,” says Sheik Abbas. “All
spirituality derives from knowledge.” And
it’s all knowledge, including modern
science and technology, which many
contend has been hijacked by a Western
secular capitalism hell-bent on
commodifying human achievement.
But can the reformers break the
stranglehold Saudi Arabia’s clerics have
had on those whose thinking may differ
from theirs? There are promising signs. In
Mecca, shackled and shuttled from police
station to police station, I finally arrive at
the city’s elegant police headquarters. To
my surprise, a high-level official
reprimands the guard assigned to me and
orders him to remove the chains. “I
apologize for this treatment,” he says in
perfect English. We talk briefly about
Sheik Mohammed’s death, a “sad loss,”
according to the official, before I’m told
I’m free to leave. It’s quite a change in
attitude, and emblematic of the shifts in
Saudi society. “Changing course is an
integral part of the Sufi way,” Angawi had
told me earlier. “Our path is the path of
water.” A good thing, now that the
repressive dams of the clerics are starting
to leak.https://answeringwhabismandsalafism.wordpress.com/2007/01/28/sufism-in-saudi-arabia/
There’s not much love in the eyes of the
low-level Saudi official clapping me into
leg irons. And in the dank jail of the
police station on the outskirts of Mecca,
the mood is anything but playful. My
accuser stands rigid at the open doorway
leading out onto the midnight streets of
the city’s suburbs. “So you’re a Sufi,” he’d
barked at me minutes earlier, labelling
me a member of the mystical Islamic sect
that values a personal relationship with
God over blind obedience to the Koran.
I’m not, but that didn’t seem to matter
much to my gaoler. I’d been picked up at
the funeral of 60-year-old Sheik
Mohammed Alawi al-Malki, Saudi
Arabia’s leading Sufi, whose sudden death
from complications arising from diabetes
had sent shock waves through his
community. A foreigner with a camera,
mingling with members of a sect
considered heathens by more rigid
Islamists, was enough to arouse suspicion.
My four hours in detention was only a
small taste of what Saudi Arabia’s Sufis
have endured over the past two centuries.
Brutally persecuted by the puritanical
Wahhabis, Sufis were, until recently,
barely considered citizens. It’s still illegal
to possess Sufi literature — a crime
punishable by death — or practise the
meditation rituals at the heart of Sufism’s
spiritual belief system. But as Saudi
Arabia faces increasing pressure to
reform, things are loosening up.
Moderates are now edging forward, and
the Sufis, forced underground for so
many decades, are raising a bit of a
ruckus.
“A couple of years ago, you couldn’t even
say the word Sufi in Saudi Arabia,” Sheik
Abbas Alawi al Malki, Sheik Mohammed’s
56-year-old brother and potential
successor, told me. The funeral was a
benchmark for the future, he explained
from one of the libraries at his home,
adjacent to the family’s majlis , or
assembly hall, in Mecca. Driven by grief,
his brother’s admirers — Sunnis, Shias
and Sufis alike — came together to
embrace and weep. Most astonishingly,
Crown Prince Abdullah, the de facto ruler
of the kingdom, paid his respects, and
even referred to Sheik Mohammed as the
scholar of Mecca.
Sheik Mohammed, a professor of sharia
law and hadith (a collection of the sayings
of the prophet) at Mecca’s Sharia College,
was, of course, well-respected in some
circles. But what made the crown prince’s
presence striking is that the sheik, as an
avowed Sufi, had been banned by Saudi
Arabia’s conservative religious
establishment from teaching in the holy
sanctuary in Mecca, and branded an
infidel by many of the conservative
scholars in the country and abroad.
“Prince Abdullah’s visit was like a green
light for the moderate line of religious
practice in Saudi Arabia,” Sheik Abbas
proclaimed.
Today, Sufis are meeting and discussing
their future in Saudi Arabia in growing
numbers. A June 2004 assembly on
religious reforms in the kingdom,
organized by the monarchy, was attended
by Sheik Mohammed, openly representing
the Sufi movement. “It was amazing,” his
brother remembered. “He sat between
the Sunni and Shia representatives, like a
mediator.”
If any Muslim sect can help bridge the
burgeoning divide not only within Islam
but also with the West, it may be Sufism.
Like other Muslims, Sufis believe prayer
and fasting are important practices that
bring a person closer to God. But they
accept that a long series of prophets and
saints, including Jesus and Buddha, also
hold keys to divine knowledge. The Sufi
world view blurs the distinction between
Muslim and Christian, Jew and Hindu.
“The majority of people in the world are
Sufis, even if they don’t call themselves
that,” Ameen Rayes, Sheik Mohammed’s
42-year-old nephew, told me. “The path
of peace and moderation, the path of
love, that is the Sufi path.”
Repaving that path with a modern finish
is the challenge facing Saudi Arabia’s Sufi
community. “Mecca and Medina represent
the heart of Islam,” says Sami Angawi, an
architect and unrepentant Sufi. “Diversity
needs to be brought back to these cities
for Islam to begin its process of
rehabilitation.” He’s the founder of the
Amar Center, a Jeddah-based organization
dedicated to preserving Saudi Arabia’s
Islamic heritage. To Angawi, historical
sites are important, although his vision is
at odds with that of the clerics. They have
no use for anything they believe distracts
a Muslim from his duties to God’s divine
law, especially religious monuments. The
clerical establishment is pouring money
into building religious schools around the
world to spread their version of Islam and
limiting their restoration efforts to
expanding the pilgrimage sites at Mecca
and Medina. But as for others? “Ninety
per cent of the country’s significant
religious sites are gone,” Angawi laments.
The list includes some startlingly relevant
structures, including the house of the
Prophet Mohammed in Medina, which
Angawi tried unsuccessfully to save.
“Imagine,” he says, “if someone
uncovered the house where Jesus held the
last supper, only to rip it out. Would the
Christian world stand for it?” What has
been lost cuts to the core of his Sufi soul.
Sufis around the world flock to religious
sites, from the graves of saints to places
considered sacred for the role they played
in the spiritual awakenings of various
sheiks. While he is careful not to link
these sites with acts of worship, as Islam
is adamant that worship be reserved for
Allah alone, Angawi insists they are
important sources of spiritual strength
and renewal. But Muslims in Saudi Arabia
face being branded polytheists, another
crime punishable by death, if they argue
for their preservation.
In fact, Saudi Arabia’s hardline clerics
have adopted a familiar tack: appropriate
all knowledge by eradicating any vestiges
of past perspectives. The tactic has been
used before. As renowned Muslim
philosopher Ziauddin Sardar elegantly
argues in his 1992 essay, “The Making and
Unmaking of Islamic Culture,” “It was the
inner urge to know that transformed
Islam from its desert origins into a world
civilization.” At its height, Islamic culture
led the world in the pursuit of
knowledge. The decline, argues Sardar,
began when the concept of knowledge
was hijacked by a select few religious
scholars eager to assert their authority,
and narrowly redefined to be religious
knowledge.
But now, Sufi reformers such as Angawi
and Sheik Abbas are trying to broaden
the concept once again. “Knowledge
comes first,” says Sheik Abbas. “All
spirituality derives from knowledge.” And
it’s all knowledge, including modern
science and technology, which many
contend has been hijacked by a Western
secular capitalism hell-bent on
commodifying human achievement.
But can the reformers break the
stranglehold Saudi Arabia’s clerics have
had on those whose thinking may differ
from theirs? There are promising signs. In
Mecca, shackled and shuttled from police
station to police station, I finally arrive at
the city’s elegant police headquarters. To
my surprise, a high-level official
reprimands the guard assigned to me and
orders him to remove the chains. “I
apologize for this treatment,” he says in
perfect English. We talk briefly about
Sheik Mohammed’s death, a “sad loss,”
according to the official, before I’m told
I’m free to leave. It’s quite a change in
attitude, and emblematic of the shifts in
Saudi society. “Changing course is an
integral part of the Sufi way,” Angawi had
told me earlier. “Our path is the path of
water.” A good thing, now that the
repressive dams of the clerics are starting
to leak.https://answeringwhabismandsalafism.wordpress.com/2007/01/28/sufism-in-saudi-arabia/
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