The Pakistani government are trying to use “Sufis” to help combat the extremism they are facing. I wonder what type of “Sufis” are part of this advisory council.
Islamabad is set to combat the ongoing insurgency by spreading sufi thoughts and teachings across the violence-wracked country.
Government sources on Sunday announced setting up of a seven-member ‘Sufi Advisory Council’ (SAC) with an aim to combating extremism and fanaticism by spreading sufism in the country, Dawn News reported.
The SAC chairman and some of its members are said to be holding their first meeting at the ministry of religious affairs in Islamabad on Tuesday June 9.
The council will also invite what it calls progressive intellectuals in an effort to promote the flourishing of sufism.
It is not clear whether SAC will play a parallel role in the presence of Council of Islamic Ideology which is a constitutional body.
The decision comes as Islamabad and other major cities across Pakistan have been braced for suicide attacks since the army launched an offensive against the insurgents in the troubled northwestern Swat valley and its adjoining districts in early May.
American Islamic scholars plan Muslim US college in tradition of Brandeis, Notre Dame
By RACHEL ZOLL
The Associated Press
PLAINSBORO, N.J.
A group of American Muslims, led by two prominent scholars, is moving closer to fulfilling a vision of founding the first four-year accredited Islamic college in the United States, what some are calling a “Muslim Georgetown.”
Advisers to the project have scheduled a June vote to decide whether the proposed Zaytuna College can open in the fall of next year, a major step toward developing the faith in America.
Imam Zaid Shakir and Sheik Hamza Yusuf of California have spent years planning the school, which will offer a liberal arts education and training in Islamic scholarship. Shakir, a California native, sees the school in the tradition of other religious groups that formed universities to educate leaders and carve a space in the mainstream of American life.
Aside from fastidious academic notions of the ‘West’, it is satisfactory for us to define the ‘West’ as “Europe and the largely English-speaking nations of North America, Australia and New Zealand”. The spirituality of Islam is a profound experiential reminder to human beings about their origin, reality, and ultimate destination. This call to the heart of things, quite literally, is the meaning of man. The beautiful religion of Islam is not the preserve of the Arabs, the Indians, the Turks, the Persians, the Africans or the Asians (in the American sense); but, rather, it is a universal call to universal man, and the West has every right to it. However, the West has, of late, been largely exposed to a warped view of Islam that often borders, and sometimes crosses, the limits of what appears to be psychological pathology; and which has hardly any glimpse of the touching spiritual tradition of Islam. All of this is all the more tragic when one considers how meaning and spirituality itself have been ravished by the tidal waves of unfettered materialism. In the process, this race towards materialism has not quenched the inner yearning of many in the West for meaning; a fact that has also meant that the failure to fill with the void with the spirituality of Islam has led to many pseudo notions of spirituality that are unable to provide a sip, never mind the full measure that man’s true nature requires.
My sister showed me this article. Very intresting, but with a lot of incorrect statistics and false facts. Although I must say that this historical heritage of jihad is dead amongst many of the Sufis of today.
Mystical power Why Sufi Muslims, for centuries the most ferocious soldiers of Islam, could be our most valuable allies in the fight against extremism
By Philip Jenkins | January 25, 2009
THIRTY YEARS AGO this month, the collapse of the Shah’s government marked the launch of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, and since that point the topic of Islam has rarely been out of the headlines. All too often, we hear about Islam in the context of intolerance and, often, violence — of Al Qaeda savagery, of Taliban misogyny, of nuclear weapons in Pakistan and perhaps in Iran itself. Even in Europe, many fear the growth of a radical Islamic presence. For three decades, Western observers have worked fervently to comprehend Islam’s global power and appeal, its ability to inspire the poor and to topple governments. But in all that intense attention, most observers have missed a crucial part of the story: a global web of devout religious brotherhoods that by all logic should be a critical ally against extremism.
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May Allah (swt) preserve him. Ameen!
This is a lecture entitled “Advice to the Seekers” featuring Sh. Hamza Yusuf and Sh. Muhammad al-Yaqoubi.
