Muqaawama

Lost among headlines recently of state-sponsored piracy on the high seas and Americans headed to Somalia for jihadist training was a stunning Washington Post article by Sudarsan Raghavan about a little-known militia on the fringes of the civilized world.  When we hear the word militia, it typically conjures up negative connotations in our heads; vigilantes arming themselves to take matters into their own hands; right-wing militias in Michigan or crazed clerics in Iraq or Lebanon.  We forget that militias are often the creations of ordinary people fed up with violence and break down of law and order in their societies.  Most Iraq veterans will tell you the Sunni Awakening militias that emerged in response to the sectarian carnage stoked by Al Qaeda and other groups were a critical part of the success of the Surge.  The Taliban itself owes much of its initial and continuing popularity not to its senselessly puritanical brand of Islam but to the support of ordinary Afghans tired of warlordism and corruption.  And now we can add another group to the mix: Ahl Al Sunna Wal Ja’maa- a Sufi group in Somalia that has recently won victories against the hardline jihadist Shabab movement.

What is a Sufi, you say?  The most well-known Sufi in the Western mind- quoted by presidents and prime ministers- is probably Jalal A Din Rumi, the 13th century Afghan who wrote mind-numbing lines of Persian poetry about his love for God (and for his homosexual lover, Shams A Din).  But Sufism itself is a broader movement of mystics and aesthetics that arguably trace their beginnings to well before the advent of Islam.  They are the men and women across the Muslim world who have decided to withdraw from the harsh orthodoxy and political dogma that Islam has become and focus on a private relationship with the divine.

Throughout history, Sufis have used song, dance, poetry and wine (among other stimulants) to produce spiritual ecstasy and “oneness” with God.  These practices, as well as their veneration of saints (both Muslim saints and those of other faiths) has caused a great deal of tension between them and the orthodox Muslim clergy.  But even some of the most autocratic and reactionary of Islamic holy men (e.g. the late Ayatollah Khomeini) have been drawn to Sufism and its simple spirituality.

With some exceptions, Sufi groups have historically shunned politics as a corrupting influence, leaving the public sphere to more traditional, mainstream voices.  That may be changing as this powerful under-current of a more moderate, tolerant Islam reacts to the extreme, puritanical strains that are grabbing the headlines and fundamentally challenging Islam’s diversity of thought.

There are moderates within Islam with deep, long-standing traditions if we are prepared to take the time to look for them.  Ahl Al Sunna is taking up arms in Somalia not because they believe in violence or power, but because they want to take back their right to live and pray the way they have for generations.  These are the groups we should be supporting.  In every case, their kind of organic movement is more potent and preferable than a thousand drone strikes or a dozen local dictators.

Self-serving Islamic scholars like to point out that Islam is different than the other major religions because it was founded by a prophet who was also a political-military leader and whose successors had to run a vast empire.  Because of this, they argue, it will be more difficult to reform the faith, for Islam to recede from the political sphere as Christianity and Judaism have done to varying degrees.  Sufism defies this scholarly assertion.  Here is a tradition, stretching back to the beginnings of Islam, that is deeply vested in a private, individualized faith that holds tolerance and spirituality well above dogma.

What most of us forget amid the headlines is that Islam’s clash with the West is really a side show, a symptom, of a greater war that has been raging within Islam for the past several centuries over the proper balance between tradition and modernity.  It might be better strategy in the long term to let this tension play out between local actors while carefully supporting moderate voices instead of inserting ourselves- a foreign power- directly into the mix.  This kind of disruption almost always plays into the hands of extremists peddling a narrow, exclusionary vision and puts those with more tolerant, long standing traditions on the defensive.

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