Source:http://en.qantara.de Islamic scholars and researchers agree that Sufism has the potential to cure those whose minds have been perverted by terrorism. Famous Sufis of previous generations include Rumi, Omar Khayyam, Fariduddin Attar – whose stories were later used by Chaucer – and the Spaniard Averroes, the ″great commentator″ on Aristotle. Many of their ideas passed to Europe through contact between the Islamic and Christian worlds in the crusader states, Norman Sicily and the Iberian Peninsula. […]

LAHORE: The promotion of Saudi religious ideology and the Arabisation of Sub-Continental Islam is pushing Muslims away from the diversity and peaceful co-existence enshrined in their Sufi heritage, Sciences Po professor Christopher Jafferlot said on Sunday. He was speaking at a panel during the concluding day of the Heritage Now festival. He said the Sufi heritage of Pakistan has remained under threat because of Arabisation which gained momentum during General Zia-ul-Haq’s dictatorship. The historian said […]

(by http://www.artlyst.com) Asia House will be celebrating the 700th anniversary of Gulshan-i Raz, one of the greatest works of Persian (Sufi) poetry, written by Mahmoud Shabistari, in the early 14th century with ‘The Garden of Mystery’ an exhibition featuring contemporary art by the young emerging British artist, Taha Afshar. It will be supported with additional work by two of the most prominent Iranian artists of the contemporary period, Monir Farmanfarmaian and Y.Z. Kami. Monir Farmanfarmaian […]

KOLKATA: Nothing is more important in Islam than love for God and nothing can help evoke this love better than spreading love for one’s fellow humans all around. And what else can help spread this humanism but Sufism – the softer approach to the religion that has a universal appeal and connects even with non-Muslims. These were the words with which writer Sadia Dehlvi summed up a popular debate of whether Sufism was a bit […]

Preface according to religious traditions and history of religions, man has never lived without a prophet and, at all times, religions or cultures left by prophet have provided a model or program for people’s lives. One of the most important lessons given by prophets has been the lesson of ‘thinking’: thinking about the world, and the relation between man and the world and its amazing phenomena. The prophets not only formed human thought, but also […]

When an Islamic State (IS) suicide bomber killed 88 people and wounded hundreds more at a Sufi shrine in Sehwan on February 16, it did not deter the devotees of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, the 13th-century Sufi mystic, who draws millions to his tomb in Pakistan’s Sindh privince. The attack followed a bombing in November 2016 at another Sufi shrine in the remote Baluchistan region which killed at least 52 people. Sufism, a distinct theological strand […]

By Inka Piegsa-Quischotte 29 September 2016 (WWW.BBC.COM) “My name,” said the lady, clad from headscarf to sandals in shades of pink and purple, “is Bahia, which means ‘ocean of beauty and compassion’ in Arabic. Welcome to my school.” Tea was poured, sweets were proffered and we sat down in the shade of more than 100-year-old olive trees in the backyard of her tiny Montessori school to talk about Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam. But […]

By Charles Upton To set out on the Sufi path, two things are required. First, you must become a Muslim, and obey the universal norms of Islam. Secondly, you must find (God willing) a shaykh who is part of a valid silsila, a line-of-transmission stretching back to the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, and place yourself under his authority. Then you can begin. * Sufism, in practice, is the constant attention to […]

Sufism (tasawwuf) is an Islamic modality that emphasizes self-purification and the attainment of spiritually advanced states through the assumption of specific practices and disciplines, typically through affiliation with a particular brotherhood and its leader, a sheikh. Sufism has deep roots historical roots in Egypt, and the Egyptian landscape is marked with hundreds of sites significant to historical and contemporary Sufis. Today, roughly 15% of Egyptians are either members of Sufi brotherhoods or participate in Sufi […]