Word: sufi
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...take African instruments and play them with [Western] electric instruments." He describes the music as a patchwork, similar to the hodge-podge clothing worn by members of his Baye Fall religion, a Sufi branch of Islam which subsitutes Koranic studies and piety for hard labor. The group's motto dieuf dieul ("you reap what you sow") impels followers to show their devotion to god through work; in Kane's case, through his music...
...Then there is Dhani's self-professed interest in Sufism. The Sufis make up a mystical branch of Islam that conservative Muslims dismiss as unconventional at best, and deviant at worst. "The fact that he is a Sufi is already going to be controversial with most Indonesian Muslims," says Hamid Basyaib, director of the Liberal Islam Network, a Jakarta-based organization promoting a moderate version of Islam. So will Dhani's admission that he does not pray five times a day-one of the religion's cardinal commands. Says Shofwan Chairul of the University of Indonesia's Islamic Students Association...
...Hamad al Niell mosque, the first drumbeats sound in the distance, drawing back the crowd in a receding tide to make way for a motley procession of ecstatic worshipers. These are the whirling dervishes of Omdurman, and their gathering every Friday at dusk, to pay homage to their Sufi leader who lies buried here, is the closest thing the Sudanese capital has to a tourist attraction...
...charms and Rastafarian-style dreadlocks, represent a kinder, gentler picture of Sudanese society than the one world focuses on in the horrors of Darfur. While Sudan's Islamist government foments war there and disdainfully drags its heels over the implementation of a peace plan, the dervishes follow a mystical Sufi Muslim tradition that seeks harmony and "oneness" with the universe...
...leave, Al-haj tells a story containing a typically Sufi rebuke to the authorities: A Sufi leader visits a distant village while he is fasting for Ramadan. When he arrives in the village, the people welcome him by offering a glass of milk. He drinks the milk, preferring to honor their hospitality rather than his own piety...