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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Keith Feral who wrote (163712)	6/6/2005 9:30:42 AM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

The problem most people have is to think of Islam as a monolithic religion. It is far from it. Breaking it down to Sunni and Shia is a great oversimplification. Islamic views range from sects who believe in complete obedience to the "leader" as the true representative of God to those who view leadership as a simple contract between the people and the leader to those who believe in the paternal right of succession. It ranges from those who believe strict literal translation of Koran to those who believe there is a hidden meaning to Koran and that the actual text means little. But even if you limited your studies to one of half a dozen major branches of Islam, you'd still have a very hard time grasping it no matter how highly praised the "expert" whose book you are reading. The reason is that you don't have any first hand knowledge of the context and society with which you are dealing with. So you can't really reject Islam because you don't know it to begin with. Let me illustrate this with the example of Rumi: Rumi was the founder of one of the Sufi sects. Sufis (sometimes called Dervish) are a mystical branch of Islam that have often been labelled as heretical. Sufi poetry is full of scorn for the clerics and religious leaders. For example: Oh mufti of the city we are more awakened than you, With all our drunkenness we are more alert than you, We drink the blood of grapes, and you drink the blood of people, So let's be fair, who is bloodthirstier By and large Sufis are pacifists and most do not even believe is smallest amount of coercion of animals, let alone human beings. Many are vegetarian. The principle Sufi belief is oneness of universe (somewhat similar to Buddhist views). Rumi describes it as such: Just as light is both part of fire and detached from it, Every particle of the universe is both God and a separate entity. In the poem you cited, joining "Beloved", though often translated as God, actually means achieving oneness with the universe. Dissolution of "self" is not in some Marxist concept you may think, but rather in the understanding of your own true relationship with the world. Furthermore, and this is most important, Sufis do not believe in some kind of intellectual or philosophical understanding of religion. Rather they are very Existential in their approach and believe in the experience of God. Rumi explains this by the analogy that cold iron cannot intellectually understand fire. But it can be engulfed by it and experience it. He goes on to say once the iron has "experienced" fire, it is no longer iron per se, but fire as it will radiate light and heat. In short, far from being a "Marxist" regime or even a religion, Sufism is about the individual experience of Universal Spirit. Unfortunately, Sufi literature is nearly impossible for the uninitiated to grasp. ST PS See en.wikipedia.org Many Sufi practitioners are organized into a very diverse range of brotherhoods and sisterhoods. Although many orders ("tariqas") can be classified as Shi'a or Sunni or even both, there are a few that are clearly neither Shiah nor Sunni and so constitute a separate sphere of Islamic faith. Sufis believe that their teachings are the essence of every religion, and indeed of the evolution of humanity as a whole. The central concept in Sufism is "love". Dervishes -- the name given to initiates of sufi orders -- believe that love is a projection of the essence of God to the universe. They believe that God desires to recognize beauty, and as if one looks at a mirror to see oneself, God "looks" at itself within the dynamics of nature. Since they believe that everything is a reflection of God, the school of Sufism practices to see the beauty inside the apparently ugly, and to open arms to what they believe as even the most evil one. This religious tolerance is expressed in Sufism via these lines which are often attributed to the famous Sufi philosopher and poet Mevlana Rumi (but which were penned before his time, according to some scholars): "Come, come, whoever you are. Worshiper, Wanderer, Lover of Leaving; ours is not a caravan of despair. Though you have broken your vows a thousand times...Come, come again, Come." (In many Unitarian Universalist youth groups this poem is sung with minor alterations.) Sufis teach in personal groups, believing that the intervention of the master is necessary for the growth of the pupil. They make extensive use of parables and metaphors, in such a way that the meaning is only reachable through a process of seeking for the utmost truth and knowledge of oneself... ...