The Bad Sufi

A look at the practice of Contemporary Sufism in Pakistan. by Qalandar Bux Memon 19 feb,2010

It is often assumed that Sufism stands opposed to Wahhabism. Wrong.

Sufism and Wahhabism, in fact, share a fatal characteristic – they are

religions of the status quo.  In Pakistan, Sufism legitimises

barbarities of inequality and starvation – ‘do nothing, it’s god’s

will’ - while at the same time justifying structures of oppressive

power, Pirism and landlordism, rather like Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia.

Contemporary Sufism, rather than being a solution to Pakistan’s

problems, is the cause.

I was sitting at the shrine of Shah Kamal in Lahore, with the dhol

beats and whirling dervishes dancing to connect to the ‘centre of the

universe in themselves’, when a friend turned and pointed to an old

German fellow sitting a few meters from us. “He just delivered a

lecture on Sufism. He is an expert on the subject, and talked about

how it’s a religion of peace and love.”

I replied curtly: “Have you ever been in love? Have you had your heart

broken? What peace is there in that state? What peace was there when

Mansur had his head chopped off on the orders of the Baghdadi Emperor?

What peace was there when Shah Inayat was fighting against the Mughal

emperor for his life and that of his commune? What peace is there in

Sassui’s peeling feet as she searches for her beloved through the

desert of Sindh?”

My friend agreed and said: “But they pay me – I have to go along with them.”

Western and Pakistani policymakers think Islam can be codified as

either a religion of peace and love and given the brand of Sufism, or

as a religion of violent jihad. They think it’s better, at this point

in time, to promote the peaceful religion of Sufism.

Note how the word Islam is taken out – Sufism is codified as not

really Islam. Thus Sufism is considered a perfect native antidote to

the violent religion of Islam.

Why are dollars, pounds, rupees and Euros going to promote Sufism?

What is it about today’s Sufism that allows it to serve a purpose for

the American empire, and what function does it play locally in

Pakistan?

The answer was hard for me to stomach. I had spent much time

researching aspects of Sufism, and I thought I’d found a touchstone

from which to articulate a spirituality that was socially radical and

politically challenging to Pakistan’s parasitic elite and the US/Nato

invaders. Ziauddin Sardar, polymath writer and scholar of Islam,

forced me to face the facts.

He called Sufism “docile”, acting as an opiate for the masses, with

most Pirs/Syeds/Sufis amounting to nothing short of “confidence

tricksters”. And indeed, Sufism is docile. A shopkeeper in Main

Market, Gulberg, had an emblem of the Sufi saint Lal Qalandar hanging

in his shop, which he had got from Sehraw Sharif, Sindh, the town

where the saint is buried. He said that “what these people do not

realise is that 80 per cent of what we pray at the shrine [of Lal

Qalandar] comes true.” A popular song sung across the Punjab at Sufi

shrines tells women that if they light a lantern at the shrine of

saints, their desire for a ‘son’ will be answered.

Items given by holy Pirs - threads, rings, blessings, and even sexual

induction before marriage (in the case of a notorious Sindhi

landlord/Pir) - are taken as altering the universe and leading to the

granting of prayers of health, wealth, and other worthy claims by this

mass of the wretched that is the Pakistani citizen. It is not only

candles and lanterns that are lit at the shrines; money is exchanged

and power is sustained. It is this power that has created a “docile”

Sufism.

Pakistan is a vastly unequal society. Government figures put those

below the poverty line at close to 40 per cent of the population,

though the true figure may be closer to 50 per cent. Inequity is the

hallmark of the Sindh province of Pakistan, which is celebrated as

“the land of the Sufis” and is where Sufis and Pirs hold power.  A

recent World Bank report noted that Sindh has the narrowest

distribution of land ownership, with the richest one per cent of

farmers owning 150 per cent more land than the bottom 62 per cent of

farmers put together. Feudal landlords in vast parts of Sindh have

holdings of thousands of acres, and most of them are Syeds or Pirs.

These lands were sometimes acquired during the Mughal era but were

largely consolidated during the British colonial rule in India. The

British, looking for local collaborators, found Sufi Pirs willing to

oblige.

Sarah Ansari, in her book, Sufi Saints and State Power: The Pirs of

Sind, 1843-1947, notes: ‘the Sindhi Pirs participated in the British

system of control in order to protect their privileges and to extend

them further whenever and wherever possible’.

Today’s feudalists are keen to protect and promote “docile” Sufism to

sustain their wealth and power – this time with US help.

Wealth is created by a pool of landless serfs who toil thousands of

acres for their spiritual masters, while seeing their own children

starve. These serfs create the wealth that sends the Bhuttos and the

Gilanis to universities such as Oxford and Harvard, while their

children get “blessings” and threads of “Pirs”. This stream of

inequity from generation to generation is based on a lame theological

idea, which nonetheless has been promoted by the Mughal Empire, the

British Empire, the landlords themselves, and now by the American

Empire, and thanks to such patronage has gained far more ground than

the Taliban. It states that the Prophet was given divine

light/knowledge, which passes on to his descendents. These descendents

append the honorific title of ‘Syed’ [literally, ‘master’], and claim

divine and material privileges.

Pirs justify their superiority on a similar argument – they were given

the light, and this light continues to radiate in their descendants.

At a recital of the poetry of the radical Sufi Waris Shah held each

year in Lahore, the descendents of Iman Bari Sarkar (a Pir) enter the

arena to be received with awe and sought for blessings by the crowd.

The recital stops and they are escorted to the front and seated. All

eyes are on these holy men who are not only descendents of a Pir but

also Syeds – thus, doubly blessed with ‘light’! And then they begin

expounding their ideology: “We the Syeds get different treatment from

God Almighty, for our good deeds we get double the reward compared to

‘murids’ [non-Syeds] who only get single reward for a single good deed

… but, it’s not easy to be a Syed … [he laughs] … we have to suffer

double the punishment for our any wrong deeds whereas you [non-Syeds]

get only single punishment for a single wrong deed!”

There you have it! Our holy man explains why he has a Land Cruiser

jeep and “non-Syeds” have donkey carts. He explains why most

Pakistanis are living in poverty while he and his Syeds and Pirs are

lapping it up in luxury.

Contemporary Sufism is the ideology of Sindh’s landlords. It is the

ideology that is used to uphold their wealth and despotism, and keeps

millions in serfdom. A similar pattern is repeated throughout

Pakistan. Given the lack of proportional representation and the vast

inequality in power in each district between Pirs and the rest, it is

almost always the case that elections flood parliament with

Pirs/Syeds/landlords. The current Pakistani Prime Minister (Syed

Yousaf Raza Gilani) and Foreign Minister (Makhdoom Shah Mehmood

Qureshi) are examples. Both have the claim of being descended from

Holy Pirs as the basis of their wealth and distinction. As a result,

we cannot expect parliament to challenge inequity and injustice in

Pakistan.

Parliamentarians know that lack of education, coupled with the

obscurantism of contemporary Sufism, sustains their power. Like the

British before them, the Americans don’t care about Pakistan’s growing

multitude of serfs and the underclass, they don’t care whether the

Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister of Pakistan are deeply rooted

in the cause of inequity and injustice in the country and part of the

promotion of a system of starvation – a Sufism that tells people to

take a blessing instead of demanding food, education, justice and

liberty. Like the British, they will fund whoever furthers their

interests. We, however, must care.