Why Isn't Sufism Violent?/Stereotyping "Islam"

[Shiranu]

This has something I have been thinking about for awhile now but haven't had time to post due to class and work. So my question is this; why isn't Sufism... given how unequivocally violent Islam "inherently is"... more violent?

Sufism takes the idolization of Muhammad to the next level; he is not just the divine mouth of god but instead a living, breathing personification of god. They trace their lineage straight to Muhammad himself and follow mostly the four different branches of Sunni Islam (Which is weird since Islam is obviously unquestionable and absolute and not open to interpretation). Likewise Muhammad is held by some here as the "perfect personification" of a political power and warlord; yet the sect that worships Muhammad to the highest extreme are largely apolitical and largely nonviolent.

If Islam is "the greatest evil facing mankind", that the words of Muhammad cannot be questioned as anything but the most vile and violent of words to ever been put to text and has the power to turn even the most peaceful of person into a blood thirsty savage... then why does the sect that holds the man and his words to the highest reverence tend to be nonviolent and stay out of politics?

I think Sufism get's a shit load wrong and is not something I would particularly want to adhere to... however I cant help but look at Sufism and wonder how anyone can think Islam is a monolithic and homogeneous system... or that it is an entity that is somehow the one ideology in the world that cannot possibly be influenced by outside factors.

-----

This is my problem; you can criticize Islam all you want... have at it. You can criticize anything all you want... but when you are using scare tactics and hyperbole at the expense of actually thinking your position though then I think you are fair game to be called on it. If you mistake that for defending Islam... well that is frankly your problem. I am more or less indifferent to Islam as I am to Christianity or Judaism or Hinduism. What I am not indifferent to is people using lies and incendiary rhetoric to scare people into distrusting a billion plus people as "potentially violent" and making it socially acceptable to think that a group is "the most dangerous group in the world!". And unfortunately that is the stage we have reached.

When you say "Islam" is violent it is as pointless as saying "Christianity" or "atheism" is violent because these things mean different things to different people and have to be addressed on a case-by-case or culture-by-culture basis. The implication that American... Turkish... Signapore... Saudi... Pakistani... Somali... etc. Muslims are all similar in culture is just bluntly ignorant; all follow the "unquestionable" Islam and yet they all are extremely varied both as a whole but also then in subsets amongst themselves.

So what good does it to point out that Islam is not just violent but indeed "the root cause of all evil that turns good men into monsters!"? You are pointing out something inherently meaningless; rather than address the actual sickness you point to one symptom and say "Aha! This is what the problem is! This cough is what causes the illness... it is the greatest ailment the man dying of lung cancer has! If only he was treated of his cough he would be fully whole!".

Apply this reasoning to any other group... any other ideology... that is not an en vogue boogieman and you will realise how silly it sounds; "Egads the socialists! Such a vile ideology! It promotes stripping man of their basic human freedoms... their rights to individuality! There are communists who blow themselves up and cause violence! Therefor socialism is obviously a homogeneous group and all socialists are potentially evil... so we must always be on alert and ban their "manifestos" and arrest and deport them!".

We said that shit back during the red scare... it's not like this is some hypothetical situation. It's the same bullshit over and over... just change "communist" to "anarchist" to "mexican" to "Muslim". And I have without a doubt the feeling I would be called a "Communist Apologist" back during the McCarthyism days or a "Nigger Apologist" before that for using the same logic.

So if trying to hold a consistent standard to how we view our fellow human beings makes me a "Boogieman-of-the-day Apologist"... frankly I will wear that badge with pride. I rather wear it than wave a banner of buying into bullshit hype and fearing the fashionable scapegoat of the generation.

[pr126]

This is my problem; you can criticize Islam all you want... have at it. You can criticize anything all you want.

Why, thank you so much.  I think I will, now that I have your permission.

Yes, Islam is a very bad ideology. Better still, it is a death cult. No hyperbole at all.
It is in the Islamic books. I could quote chapter and verse.

.. but when you are using scare tactics and hyperbole at the expense of actually thinking your position though then I think you are fair game to be called on it.

I am not using scare tactics.  Jihadist do.
ISIS, the Taleban, Boko Haram, the Charlie Hebdo murderers, the ones blow themselves up in crowded places, stab random people on streets,  etc. etc.  those are using scare tactics.

Why? Because their holy books tells them to do so. And they did so whole heartedly for 14 centuries. 

When you say "Islam" is violent it is as pointless as saying "Christianity" or "atheism" is violent because these things mean different things to different people and have to be addressed on a case-by-case or culture-by-culture basis.

Really? Statistically, in this century which group of people have been prominent in violence?
Do you need to think about this? Take your time.

What is your prediction for the near future, - say just in your own lifetime? More of the same? Or peace in our time?

[stromboli]

Sufism is mostly about mysticism, I would guess in a similar way to the Kabbalah in Judaism. But as far as Sufis being nonviolent, they are suffused through both Sunni and Shiite lineages. Like both Sunni and Shiite, they maintain they are the "true" lineage of Islam. I think you'd have a hard time picking out a Sufi from the group without knowing what their individual belief is. Whether they are nonviolent or not I have no idea.

To the Sufi, it is the transmission of divine light from the teacher's heart to the heart of the student, rather than worldly knowledge, that allows the adept to progress. They further believe that the teacher should attempt to inerrantly follow the Divine Law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufism


I think they may see themselves more as teachers and "enlightened" men rather than warriors.

[Baruch]

There have been specific violent Sufi orders both now and in the past.  Some are non-violent.  The largest order in India, is Sunni, and violent.  Of course the Sunnis consider Shia of any kind as anathema.  Some Sufi orders are non-Muslim in the eyes of most Muslims ... the Ahmadiyya order in Pakistan (there is another order of the same name that is orthodox) is considered too unorthodox to be considered Muslim.  And Salafists want to destroy all Sufi orders, orthodox or not, Sunni or not.

The most famous non-violent Sufis are the Whirling Dervishes of Turkey.  But as Shoe was clear in her posts, she views the Sufi leader, Gulen, as enemy of the secular state in Turkey ... though he is also certainly opposed to Erdogan as she is.  If I were Muslim, I would be a Sufi ... and totally opposed to the Salafists.

[Shiranu]

Why, thank you so much.  I think I will, now that I have your permission.

Yes, Islam is a very bad ideology. Better still, it is a death cult. No hyperbole at all.
It is in the Islamic books. I could quote chapter and verse.

I will give you that it is a bad ideology (SHIRANU SAID WHAT!?!?!?) but a death cult? No... that is straight fucking hyperbole. Here are examples of ACTUAL death cults... the People's Temple of Jim Jones... Shoko Asahara's Aum Shinriyko... the Heaven's Gate group.... the Order of the Solar Temple.... those are actual death cults because everyone in the cult believed it was true.

If a majority of Muslims believed in killing in the name of Islam for the sake of Islam... then you know what I would be right beside you saying they are. But that simply is not the case ... so I cannot call that anything other than hyperbole.

I am not using scare tactics.  Jihadist do.
ISIS, the Taleban, Boko Haram, the Charlie Hebdo murderers, the ones blow themselves up in crowded places, stab random people on streets,  etc. etc.  those are using scare tactics.

Why? Because their holy books tells them to do so. And they did so whole heartedly for 14 centuries. 

Mmhmm. Sure.

If you want to believe what the evidence... common sense... and the experts all say about terrorism in the Middle East then you won't come to that conclusion. But if you want to just paint the world in black and white and somehow believe that the Muslim brain exists in a vacuum completely isolated from foreign influences or basic psychology that every other human follows... I guess that position can make sense.

Really? Statistically, in this century which group of people have been prominent in violence?
Do you need to think about this? Take your time.

Internally violent? Latin American Christians.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/10/worlds-highest-murder-rates_n_5125188.html

Externally violent? The United States (and that one extends past the 2000s and into the decades before). The Islamic world cant hold a candle to how many civilians we have killed lately or how many governments we overthrew and millions of people's lives we turned into a living hell by propping up dictators and overthrowing democratically elected leaders... particularly in Latin America (which like the Middle East is now a very violent region in large part because of this foreign intervention).

If you mean century literally... then you might remember this event called World War II. It was by some accounts a rather violent affair. I'm not sure I buy into the hype of it being thaaaat bad... but I mean it probably coulda sucked to live in I guess. Or World War I before it. Or being a black man in America before the Civil Rights movement. Or being gay (hey... did you know we killed our gays too? Crazy!)... speaking of which... didn't yall chemically castrate one of the men who won you World War II for being gay? Hmmm... yes such a morally superiour society...

Shit... almost forgot... Abu Ghraib... Vietnam... Korea... god knows what in Latin America that we funded but didn't "actively participate in"...

But yes... Muslims have been pretty violent comparatively... really not really...

[Hakurei Reimu]

The problem with saying any group is "the most violent" is that requires you to actually compare that violence against some standard. The problem for the Comedy Show is that the Christian world isn't really all that better.

[Baruch]

I stop listening when someone says ... we are not that kind of human, we are the kind that are non-violent ... sure, like a 3 dollar bill ;-(  Even Hindus kill other people ... and sometimes Buddhists kill others too.

[Baruch]

Back to the original topic ...

So Sufis either are or are not Muslims, depending on ideology.  Actual Islam practicing Sufis, as far as I am concerned, are the acme of Islam ... and those who oppose such ... are heretics.  So Wahhabis, Salafists and ISIS ... are in fact ... heretics.  And to base opposition to Islam (as opposed to Muslims) based on heresy ... is unfair.  If the majority of Muslims were pro-Salafist and anti-Sufi .. then yes, they have achieved a "protestant" reformation ... as I think they have.  Why people think that Protestants circa 1600 are better than Catholics circa 1600 ... is ignorance.  Enlightenment came when even Protestantism was rejected by the college educated.

To add to my first post in this string ... the Ahmadiyya in Egypt ... are the orthodox Ahmadiyya.  The Naqshbandiyya in India is the militant Sunni order.  The Mawlawiyya in Turkey are the followers of Rumi, are the Whirling Dervishes.  I will post more ... because it separates true from fake Muslims, to study how real Sufis are different from modern Muslims.

[Baruch]

The inner quality of a culture is revealed in poetry in general ...

Arabic poetry went from ...
glorification of tribal warfare, pride, profane love and wine before Muhammad to ...
surrender to Allah, profane love and wine after Muhammad ...
most Muslims were not as ascetic as Muhammad was personally.

We don't know much about how common people felt about life, because all poetry was courtly poetry ...
but once the Sufis came along about 100 years after Muhammad ...
courtly poetry was reinterpreted and reenacted as lyric in the Sufi lodge, in ways not done at court ...
where profane love was turned to love of Allah, and wine was turned to mystical ecstasy.

Often courtly poetry was done in "feminine voice" ... the beloved was seen as male ...
in the court this could be taken as pederastry since the people reciting these poems were men ...
but in the Sufi lodge, the reinterpretation by male reciters was even more challenging.